THE ROMANCE OF 
THE RED TRIANGLE 



SIR ARTHUR K.YAPR K.B.E. 



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Class _~JLJ 3_^_ 



THE ROMANCE OF 
THE RED TRIANGLE 



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Y.M.C.A. AND GERMAN OBSERVATION 'STATION IN THE TREES 
AT ACHIET-LE-PETIT 



THE ROMANCE 

OF THE 

RED TRIANGLE 

THE STORY OF THE COMING OF THE 

RED TRIANGLE AND THE SERVICE 

RENDERED BY THE Y.M.C.A. TO THE 

SAILORS AND SOLDIERS OF THE 

BRITISH EMPIRE 

BY 

SIR ARTHUR K. YAPP, K.B.E. 



Illustrations by 
W. P. STARMER, EDGAR WRIGHT 

AND OTHER ARTISTS 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 



DEDICATION 

This book is affectionately dedicated to Y.M.C.A. 
leaders and workers at home and abroad in grate- 
ful appreciation of their faithful and loyal service. 
Much of this work has been done out of sight, and 
endless difficulties have had to be surmounted. 
Names have not been mentioned in the book, but 
the writer would like to express his personal 
gratitude and appreciation to every one. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 



PAGE 

THE COMING OF THE RED TRIANGLE . . I 



CHAPTER II 
BLAZING THE TRAIL WITH THE RED TRIANGLE 1 9 

CHAPTER III 
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 33 

CHAPTER IV 

THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE .... 39 

CHAPTER V 

THE LADIES OF THE RED TRIANGLE . . 63 

CHAPTER VI 

'GUNGA DIN' OF THE RED TRIANGLE . . 7 1 

CHAPTER VII 

IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN ... 80 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VIII 

PAGE 

THE BARRAGE AND AFTER . . . Io8 



CHAPTER IX 
'les parents des blesses' . . . .118 

CHAPTER X 
cellars and dug-outs on the western 

FRONT 126 

CHAPTER XI 

CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 1 33 

CHAPTER XII 

STORIES OF 'LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' . .. . 146 

CHAPTER XIII 

THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE EAST . . 1 62 

CHAPTER XIV 

SIDE LINES OF THE RED TRIANGLE . . 1 75 

CHAPTER XV 

THE RED TRIANGLE AND THE WHITE ENSIGN . 191 



CONTENTS ix 



CHAPTER XVI 

PAGE 

THE RELIGION OF THE RED TRIANGLE . . 195 



CHAPTER XVII 

STORIES OF THE INVERTED TRIANGLE . . 211 

CHAPTER XVIII 

THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE RECONSTRUCTION , 236 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Y.M.C.A. and German observation station in the 

trees at Achiet-le- Petit .... Frontispiece 

Hut in the grounds of the ruins of the H6tel-de- page 

Ville at Arras 16 

One of many Y.M.C.A. huts built under shell-fire . 17 

The first Y.M.C.A. over the German trenches on 

the Somme battlefield 32 

The Y.M.C.A. in the orchard at Albert ... 33 

A refuge for the refugees 48 

Y.M.C.A. marquee in the shell-swept Somme area . 49 

Y.M.C.A. in a ruined parish hall in Flanders, 

June, 1916 ....... 64 

Bapaume-Cambrai road, with trees all cut down by 

the Germans 65 

The Red Triangle in the support trenches . . 80 

'George Williams House' in the front trenches . 81 

A half-way house to the trenches .... 81 

xi 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The Y.M.C.A. in a ruined warehouse. Shell-hole 

in floor of canteen 96 

A Y.M.C.A. cellar at Ypres 97 

Hut in wilderness of destruction. Cutting the ice 

in shell-holes for water for tea — winter, 19 16-17 112 

Ruined house used by Y.M.C.A., propped up by 

timber 113 

Canadian Y.M.C.A. dug-out in a mine crater on 

Vimy Ridge, 1917 128 

A Canadian Y.M.C.A. dug-out near Vimy Ridge . 129 

A great boon to British Tommy — a Y.M.C.A. well 

under shell-fire 144 

The Cambridge dug-out 144 

A refuge for the walking wounded . . . . 145 

Y.M.C.A. motor kitchen behind the lines . . 160 

Indian troops at the sign of the Red Triangle . 161 

A shakedown in a London hut . . . . 176 

Relatives of the dangerously wounded are looked 

after by the Y.M.C.A. in France . . . 176 

Y.M.C.A. night motor transport .... 177 

Y.M.C.A. in the front-line dug-outs on the Palestine 

Front 192 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

PAGE 

Y.M.C.A. dug-out and canteen on Palestine Front . 193 

The Y.M.C. A. at Basra, Mesopotamia ... 208 

The Central Y.M.C.A., Baghdad .... 209 

The Red Triangle in Jerusalem .... 224 

The Hexham Abbey hut, Schevingen, Holland . 224 

Salonica : winter on the Doiran Front, showing 

Y.M.C.A. tent 225 

A welcome Y.M.C.A. in the trenches . . . 225 

Y.M.C.A. for interned prisoners of war, Leysin, 

Switzerland 232 



CHAPTER I 
THE COMING OF THE RED TRIANGLE 

His Majesty congratulates the Association on the 
successful results of its war work, which has done 
everything conducive to the comfort and well-being 
of the armies, supplying the special and peculiar 
needs of men drawn from countries so different 
and distant. It has worked in a practical, econo- 
mical and unostentatious manner, with consummate 
knowledge of those with whom it has to deal. At 
the same time the Association, by its spirit of dis- 
cipline, has earned the respect and approbation of 
the military authorities. — His Majesty the King. 

It was in the summer of 1901, in the old 
volunteer days, that the Y.M.C.A. for the 
first time had its recreation tents at Conway 
in North Wales. The Lancashire Fusiliers 
were in camp, and the men had thronged the 
marquee all day, turning up in great force 
for the service that Sunday evening. It 
seemed as if they would never tire of singing 
the old familiar hymns, and when the time 

A 



2 THE COMING OF 

came for the address the attention of every 
man was riveted from start to finish. At 
length the tent cleared, and the men retired 
for the night. Now and then the chorus of 
a hymn could be heard coming from a bell 
tent, but soon the ' Last Post ' sounded, and 
a few minutes later the plaintive notes of 
the bugle gave the signal for ' Lights Out/ 
Thereupon two of the Y.M.C.A. leaders, 
leaving the camp behind, walked up and 
down the sands of Morfa. It was a perfect 
night ; not a sound was to be heard except 
the gentle ripple of the waves, three or four 
hundred yards away. The moon was near 
the full ; everything seemed almost as light 
as day, and the bold outline of the Conway 
Mountain stood in clear relief against the 
sky. 1 1 wonder what all this means/ said 
one of the two, referring to the impressive 
service of the evening and to the crowds 
that had thronged the tents all day. ' I 
have been wondering/ said he, ' if there is a 



THE RED TRIANGLE 3 

great European war looming in the distance, 
and if God is preparing the Y.M.C.A. for 
some great work it is destined to perform 
then/ How often have those words come 
back since the beginning of the war ! God 
was indeed preparing the Association for a 
work infinitely bigger than any of its leaders 
knew or even dared to hope. In those days 
H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught became 
Patron of our Military Camp Department, 
and he has ever since been a warm friend. 

How far distant now seem those early 
days of August 1914. For weeks there had 
been rumours of war, but all arrangements 
had been completed for the work of the 
Y.M.C.A. in the Territorial camps to pro- 
ceed as usual during the August holidays. 
Then came the order for mobilisation, and 
on August the 4th a council of war was 
held at Headquarters, attended by Associa- 
tion leaders from all parts of the country. 



4 THE COMING OF 

Many of the districts were in financial diffi- 
culties, owing to the sudden break up of 
the summer camps, and the only possible 
policy was the one agreed upon at the 
meeting — a common programme and a 
common purse. No one knew where the 
men, or the money, were to come from, but 
it was decided to go right ahead, and from 
that resolve there could be no turning back. 
It is still true that ' He that saveth his life 
shall lose it, and he that loseth his life shall 
find it/ In that great crisis, had the 
leaders of the Y.M.C.A. stopped to consider 
first the immediate or future interests of 
the Association, then the Association would 
have gone under, and deservedly so. 
Britain was in danger, and her interests 
had to be considered first. 

What stirring days those were ! We 
think of one tiny village to the south-west 
of Salisbury Plain, with a normal popula- 
tion of two or three hundred. Within a 



THE RED TRIANGLE 5 

few days of the opening of hostilities, thirty- 
four thousand men were dumped down in 
the immediate vicinity. They had no tents, 
no uniforms, no rifles, nowhere to go, and 
nothing to do, for the simple reason that 
England did not desire war and had not 
prepared for it. The General in command 
had known the Y.M.C.A. in India, and came 
to London to ask our help, which was 
gladly given. Huge recreation tents were 
opened there, and all over the country. 
North, South, East, and West, Britain was 
suddenly transformed into one armed camp, 
and the Y.M.C.A. was never more needed 
than it was in those early days. Some of 
the centres were very small, others very 
large. At the Y.M.C.A. in the White City, 
for instance, it was no uncommon thing to 
see four or five thousand men gathered 
together in the great hall. At the Crystal 
Palace, too, and in many of the camps, 
the work was carried out on a very large 



6 THE COMING OF 

scale, whilst in other centres a farm building, 
a private house, or a tiny tent met the need. 
Thanks to the loyal co-operation and 
energy of Association leaders and workers, 
two hundred and fifty of these centres were 
established within ten days. They were 
dotted down all over the country, and every 
week that passed by showed an increase in 
strength and in the number of centres, 
until the sign of the Red Triangle was to be 
found in more than two thousand centres in 
all parts of the United Kingdom, in every 
part of the Empire, on every battle-front, 
and in some places where the Allied flags 
do not yet fly. The hands of the Military 
in those days were so full up with other 
things that they had little time to devote 
to the recreation of the troops, and our help 
was warmly welcomed. We have acted 
throughout in close co-operation with the 
Military, and we should like to add our 
tribute of praise to the efficiency of the 



THE RED TRIANGLE 7 

Military machine, as we have come in touch 
with it. Much has been said during the 
war as to the marvels of German organisa- 
tion, and possibly not too much. At the 
same time there is quite as much to be said 
in praise of British organisation. Germany 
wanted a war whilst we did not. Germany 
prepared for war, tirelessly, ceaselessly; 
with her eye on the goal — world-wide 
dominion — she brought all her organising 
ability to bear on the preparation for the 
war she was determined to force on 
humanity. Britain, on the other hand, 
has had to improvise her war organisation 
since war has been actually forced on her. 
A run round the great base camps in France 
will show how wonderfully complete is that 
organisation — transport, supply, commis- 
sariat. Of course there have been mistakes, 
but singularly few under the circumstances. 
Many people are very critical of the War 
Office, but those who know most of the 



8 THE COMING OF 

difficulties that have been overcome and 
the successes achieved, will be the least in- 
clined to join hands with the critics. 

It is like a nightmare to think of that 
first winter of the war, with its gales, rain 
and mud, and it was when the weather was 
at its worst that the men of the first 
Canadian Contingent were encamped on 
Salisbury Plain. It is difficult to conceive 
what they would have done, but for the 
timely help of the Red Triangle. The roads 
were almost impassable, and the mud in 
the vicinity of the camps appalling, but 
the Canadians stuck it, and so did our 
leaders and workers. The tents were 
crowded to their utmost capacity, but it 
was soon found that no tent could weather 
the gales of Salisbury Plain in winter. 
That discovery led to the evolution of the 
Y.M.C.A. hut. Wooden frames covered 
with canvas were tried first of all, but they, 
too, were incapable of withstanding the 



THE RED TRIANGLE 9 

fury of the gales, and something much 
stronger had to be provided. 

It meant a great deal to the country 
during that first winter of the war that the 
men were happy and contented, because 
they had their leisure hours pleasantly 
occupied, and because the most popular 
place in camp was almost without exception 
the one that bore the sign of the Red 
Triangle. And what did they find at the 
sign of the Red Triangle ? They found 
there an open house, a warm welcome, a 
place of recreation and enjoyment, where 
they could meet their friends on terms 
thoroughly cordial and unofficial. Coffee 
and buns were always a great attraction, 
and as for music — the piano was hardly 
ever silent. Tommy Atkins loves a good 
tune and loves a crowd ; the quiet place 
does not so much appeal to him. At the 
Y.M.C.A. he found diversion for his hours 
of leisure ; opportunity for study if he 



io THE COMING OF 

cared for it ; libraries, classes, and lectures. 
There, too, he found an expression of 
religious life that appealed to him, the 
inspiration that comes from religion without 
the controversy and sectarian bitterness 
which, alas! too often accompany it, a 
religion to work by and a religion that can 
do things. Before the war nobody had 
heard of our mystic sign, but within a few 
weeks letters bearing it had found their 
way into hundreds of thousands of homes, 
bringing joy and consolation wherever they 
went. That, in brief, is the story of the 
coming of the Red Triangle. And what is 
its significance ? As the emblem of the 
war work of the Y.M.C.A. it has not been 
chosen by chance, but because it exactly 
typifies the movement it represents. The 
threefold needs of men are its concern, and 
its programme is adapted to meet the needs 
of body, mind, and spirit, whilst its colour 
symbolises sacrifice. In an old book of 



THE RED TRIANGLE n 

signs and wonders calledMysterium Magnum 
the inverted triangle appears as a symbol of 
the divine spirit, and in the third year of 
the war a famous Belgian painter asked 
' Qu'est-ce-que c'est— cet Y.M.C.A. ? ' and 
without waiting for an answer went on to 
say that the Red Triangle meant emblem- 
atically — ' Spirit informing and penetrating 
matter/ which was, he supposed, the func- 
tion of the Y.M.C.A. ' The Y.M.C.A. is 
attempting the impossible/ said one of its 
critics ; ' it is building on the apex of the 
triangle/ Thank God it is. Yes ! and 
thank God it has achieved the impossible. 
If any one had dared to foretell four years 
ago, a tithe of what has already been 
accomplished, no one would have believed 
it. The secret of the inverted triangle is 
that it is upheld by invisible hands, and it 
is the full programme of the Red Triangle 
that appeals so irresistibly to the men. 
If we were merely out to run a canteen, 



12 THE COMING OF 

others could perhaps have done the canteen 
work as well, or nearly as well, as the 
Y.M.C.A. Others could run lectures for 
the troops, and others cater for their 
spiritual needs, but it has been left to the 
Y.M.C.A. to formulate the appeal to the 
whole man — Body, Mind, and Spirit — 
and the appeal to every man, irrespective 
of creed or party. Every man is equally 
welcome in the Y.M.C.A. — Protestant, 
Romanist, Anglican, Free-churchman, Jew, 
Mohammedan, Buddhist, Hindoo, or 
Brahmin — the men of every religion and 
no religion, and yet the religious note is 
ever dominant, though no man's religion 
will ever be attacked from a Y.M.C.A. 
platform. 

The story of the Red Triangle is, indeed, 
one of the great romances of the war. Its 
work has never been regarded as an end 
in itself, but rather as auxiliary to that of 
other organisations. It is auxiliary to 



THE RED TRIANGLE 13 

the Church, and its doors have been thrown 
wide open to the Padres of all denomina- 
tions. Protestants, Catholics, Jews — even 
Mohammedans — have worshipped God in 
their own way within the hospitable walls 
of the Association. It has been auxiliary 
to the official medical services of the Army, 
the R.A.M.C., and the Red Cross — in 
hospitals and convalescent camps, and 
with the walking wounded at the clearing 
stations at the Front. It has arranged 
concerts and entertainments by the thou- 
sand for patients and nurses ; has looked 
after the friends of dangerously wounded 
men, and has often handed over its huts 
to be used as emergency hospitals ; while 
in hosts of other ways which can never be 
recorded, it has been able to render vitally 
important service. It has been auxiliary 
to the Military machine at every turn of 
the war. In the midst of the camp though 
not of it, its secretaries and workers con- 



i 4 THE COMING OF 

form to military rules and are subject to 
discipline, although they are themselves 
civilians. In this way the Association has 
provided the human touch, and officers 
and men alike have appreciated the fact 
that there is one place in camp where 
discipline through being temporarily re- 
laxed, has been permanently strengthened. 
The Romance of the Red Triangle, like 
the story of the first crusade, has been the 
romance of the pioneer. The Y.M.C.A. 
was first in the field, though now there 
are many other organised societies and 
private individuals doing similar work 
on the lines which it thought out and 
proved to be practicable. Indeed, the 
whole story of the Y.M.C.A. has been full 
of adventurous episodes of romance, not 
merely during the war, but long before 
it, commencing seventy years ago, when 
George Williams came as a boy from 
Somerset to London, and as one of 



THE RED TRIANGLE 15 

a band of twelve intrepid young men, 
founded the first branch of a movement 
destined to spread to all corners of the 
world. It is only during these years of 
war that the Society has fully come into 
its own, and received universal recognition, 
but we do not forget that to those pioneers 
of the early Victorian days and to the 
Y.M.C.A. leaders, who during the years 
before the war hammered out a policy for 
work amongst soldiers in the Volunteer 
and Territorial camps, the widespread 
movement of to-day is largely due. 

To know what the Army thinks of the 
Y.M.C.A., one need only note, on the one 
hand, the facilities given to the Association 
by officers in high command ; and on the 
other, how the N.C.O/s and men — officers 
and officer-cadets too — make use of the 
huts. 

Prior to one of our great advances in 
1917, the district to be attacked was 



16 THE COMING OF 

reconstructed behind the line in a large 
map carefully worked out on the ground, 
every road and path being clearly marked. 
Every trench, redoubt, and dug-out ; 
every hedge and ditch was recorded, and 
every gun emplacement shown. ' Reserved 
for the Y.M.C.A.' was written over a 
vacant plot near the centre of the map. 

In France ' Le Triangle Rouge ' is often 
called ' Les Ygrecs ' (The Y's), and the 
Red Triangle will pass the Association 
worker almost anywhere. It sounds odd 
in the reserve trenches, amidst the roar of 
guns and the scream of shells, to hear the 
sentry's challenge as we have heard it, 
'Halt! who goes there?' 'Y.M.C.A/ 
'Pass, Y.M., all's well!' 

One of our workers in the valley of the 
Somme in 1917 was left behind, as the 
troops advanced to follow up the line of 
the great German retreat. For weeks he 
shared his Y.M.C.A. shanty with the rats, 



THE RED TRIANGLE 17 

and late one evening went for a two miles 
walk. A sentry challenged him, and 
evidently regarded him with suspicion. 
After he had convinced the guard of his 
identity, it was explained to him that 
three German prisoners were at large, and 
one of them was known to be wearing a 
Y.M.C.A. uniform. When he awoke that 
night in his rat-infested shanty it seemed 
to him that if the three Huns chanced to 
know of his whereabouts, it would not be a 
difficult thing for them to possess them- 
selves of yet another Y.M.C.A. uniform ! 

In the early days of the war it was 
agreed that no request for the help of the 
Association, which on investigation proved 
a definite need to exist, should be refused, 
and God honoured the faith of those who 
dared to make the resolve. The way the 
movement has grown and is growing still 
is nothing short of a romance, and the 
following pages tell the story of service 



18 THE RED TRIANGLE 

rendered under the sign of the Red 
Triangle to the men of His Majesty's 
Forces, irrespective of class, creed, or 
party, in England and north of the Border, 
in Wales and Ireland, on every battle- 
front and in every base ; amongst men of 
every colour and creed who are serving 
under our great Flag — the Flag that 
stands for Freedom. 

Possibly the greatest romance of all 
will be that dealing with the work of the 
Red Triangle after the war. Who knows ? 



CHAPTER II 

BLAZING THE TRAIL WITH THE RED 
TRIANGLE 

Few organisations have done so much in caring for 
the comfort and well-being of our soldiers as your 
Associations. They have given invaluable help to 
the Army, and have immeasurably lightened the 
hardships which have to be endured by our troops. 
In recognising the excellent work that has already 
been done, I should like to wish you success in that 
which you still propose to undertake. I consider 
that your plans for after the war are not the least 
important of your activities. — The Right Hon. 
David Lloyd George, M.P. 

The Red Triangle is often to be found in 
unexpected places. ' A wonderful, friendly 
old octopus, this Y.M.C.A/ was the way 
an Australian put it, and it was not at 
all a bad description of the ubiquitous 
Red Triangle. Tommy recognises it to- 
day as his club, his meeting house, his 
home from home. It is his, and he knows 
it ! It touches him at every point and 

19 



20 BLAZING THE TRAIL 

in almost every place. The recruit finds 
it at his depot, near his billet, and in the 
training camp where he learns to be a 
soldier ; indeed, it is part of the training, 
and an important part, too. Passing 
through London or a great provincial 
city, he can stay the night in one of the 
Y.M.C.A. hostels ; he meets it again at 
the English ports before he embarks for 
one of the fighting fronts ; it is there to 
greet him on the other side, not only at 
the ports of entry and in the base camps, 
but on the lines of communication in 
France, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Mesopo- 
tamia, and right up the line, in cellar or 
dug-out as well as in rest-camp and at 
railhead. If he should have the misfortune 
to be wounded he may expect to find the 
Association at the casualty clearing station 
or in the hospital, and later on in the 
convalescent camp, or, if invalided out 
of the army, it will still stick to him and 



WITH THE RED TRIANGLE 21 

befriend him at a time when he is likely 
to need a friend. If he is numbered 
amongst the missing and finds himself in a 
prisoner of war camp in Germany, even 
then he may not be beyond the outreach 
of the Association. There is at least one 
redeeming feature to the prisoner of war 
camp in Ruhleben in Germany, for right 
in the heart of it there is a little brown 
hut with the Red Triangle and the letters 
1 Y.M.C.A.' on the roof — one of several in 
Germany erected with American Y.M.C.A. 
money, at a time when America was a 
neutral state, and run entirely by British 
prisoners of war for the benefit of their 
fellow-Britishers, who also have the mis- 
fortune to be prisoners of war. 

It is little we can do for these brave 
lads who are wearing their hearts out 
longing to hear the voices of those they 
love in the Homeland, but the Y.M.C.A. 
does what it can. 



22 BLAZING THE TRAIL 

This girdle of loving-kindness is com- 
pleted in the Internment Camps of Switz- 
erland — at Miirren, Leysin, Interlaken, 
Meiringen, and Seeburg, and in those of 
Holland at Scheveningen, Rotterdam, The 
Hague, and Groningen. None need our 
help more than the officers and men of 
those internment camps. It was one of 
the latter who said he would rather be in 
Germany than in the internment camp in 
Switzerland, for in Germany, said he, one 
has, at any rate, the excitement of trying 
to escape ; but now, working hand-in-hand 
with the British Red Cross, the Red Triangle 
provides recreation and employment for 
the long hours of leisure, and there can be 
no doubt as to the appreciation of those 
it seeks to serve. 

A worker at Cambridge went to a 
neighbouring village to arrange a flag 
day on behalf of our war fund. He was 
advised to get in touch with the post- 



WITH THE RED TRIANGLE 23 

mistress, who was keenly interested in the 
movement. ■ Of course, I am interested/ 
she said when he saw her, ' and if you will 
come into my sitting-room I will show 
you why/ There on the wall in a little 
room at the back of the post-office was 
what she called her Roll of Honour — the 
photographs of twelve lads from her 
Bible class, all serving with His Majesty's 
Forces. ' Eleven out of the twelve/ said 
she, ' write me almost every week, and 
tell me what a boon the Y.M.C.A. is to 
them. That is why I am ready to do all 
I can to help you with your Flag Day/ 
The sequel was interesting. Half an hour 
later No. 12 called to see her. ' How 
strange/ she cried; 'I was just talking 
about you, and saying you were the only 
one of the boys who never wrote express- 
ing appreciation of the Y.M.C.A/ ' That 
is easily explained/ was the reply. ' I 
have been at sea since the early days of 



24 BLAZING THE TRAIL 

the war, and have had no opportunity of 
getting ashore and using the Y.M.C.A. 
until three months ago, when I was sent 
to Egypt and stationed at the Mena camp. 
There I used the Association hut within 
sight of the great pyramid, and I appre- 
ciate the work as much as anyone to- 
day.' 

A young soldier who was formerly a 
Y.M.C.A. worker wrote from France : — 
' We came upon the Prussian Guard about 
ten days ago, and for five days and nights 
we fought hand to hand like demons, 
but in the end we gained our objective. 
You talk of the work of the Y.M.C.A. at 
home as splendid. I know it is, but here 
the Y.M.C.A/s are more. In this place, 
famous for its wonderful bell tower, the 
Y.M.C.A. is in full swing, although only 
yesterday it was shelled heavily and 
shrapnel was falling pretty thick along the 
road. Cheero ! ' Another young soldier 



WITH THE RED TRIANGLE 25 

wrote from Malta, and gave his experience 
of the Y.M.C.A. ' The Association is the 
finest thing that was ever instituted 
without doubt. The Army has blessed 
the fact many a time. I have served in 
France and a few other countries, and 
am in a position to know/ 

In the early days of the war Y.M.C.A. 
secretaries learned to adapt all kinds of 
premises, no matter how primitive, to 
meet the needs of the troops. A cow- 
house amid the trenches of the East 
Coast; a pigsty in the south-west of 
England, neither of them much to look 
at, but doing good service and helping to 
blaze the trail ; a dug-out at Anzac and 
three tiny marquees at Cape Helles ; a 
cellar at Meroc, just behind the British 
lines in the neighbourhood of Loos ; a 
chateau formerly the residence of the lord 
of the manor at Mazingarbe, and a palatial 
but ruined Technical Institute at Armen- 



26 BLAZING THE TRAIL 

tieres. It was fixed up in a convent at Aire 
— the first Y.M.C.A. to be opened in a for- 
ward position in France, and inside a ruined 
hospice at Ypres ; in a Trappist monastery 
on the Mont des Cats ; in the most southern 
city in the world at Invercargill ; above 
the clouds with the British troops in 
Italy ; inside some of the German prisoner 
of war camps in Germany ; in the old 
German Consulate at Jaffa, in the heart of 
the Holy City, and on the Palestine lines 
of communication at Gaza and Beersheba. 
'The Jolly Farmer' near Aldershot, and 
the more notorious ' Bolger's ' public house 
in Sackville Street, Dublin, made their 
appearance early in the war under the 
sign of the Red Triangle, whilst Giro's, the 
once famous night club in the heart of 
London, and the mansions of Viscount 
Wimborne and Lord Brassey have also 
been thrown open for the service of the 
Association. 



WITH THE RED TRIANGLE 27 

The trail of the Red Triangle was first 
blazed in the United Kingdom, and since 
then it has become familiar on every fight- 
ing front, and in all sorts of queer and un- 
expected places : in the jungle of India ; 
on the banks of the Tigris, the Euphrates, 
and the Nile ; amid the swamps of East 
Africa ; along the valley of the Jordan ; 
in the Egyptian desert ; in the great 
training camps of North America ; in 
Australasia and South Africa, as well as 
in the plains of Flanders and Picardy ; 
in the valleys of the Somme, the Marne, 
the Meuse, and the Aisne. It is to be 
found on the Varda and the Struma, and 
we have seen for ourselves how that trail 
has been welcomed by men of many 
nationalities — Britons from the Homeland 
and from the outposts of Empire, from 
Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New 
Zealand, and South Africa ; Indians, 
Chinese, Cape Boys and Kaffirs, French- 



28 BLAZING THE TRAIL 

men, Portuguese, and Belgians, and wher- 
ever the trail of the Red Triangle goes it 
stands for reconstruction even amid the 
horrors and desolation of war. 

An officer cadet who had spent two 
years in France, said he had noticed a 
great change in the attitude of the men. 
' In the early days of the war/ said he, 
1 men on arriving in new billets at the 
Front would say, "Is there no Y.M.C.A. 
in the village ? " Later on they took it 
for granted that the Red Triangle was 
there and asked, " Where is the Y.M.C.A. ? " 
Now they always say, "Where is it?" 
and every one knows to what they refer/ 
It brings comfort, hope, good cheer, and 
inspiration with it. An English boy 
writing home from Egypt to his people in 
the Midlands, said that the Y.M.C.A. was 
to him as ' a bit of Heaven in a world that 
was otherwise all hell/ A visitor to the 
Association at Kantara expressed his sur- 



WITH THE RED TRIANGLE 29 

prise at finding such a splendid Y.M.C.A. 
building in that Egyptian centre, fitted 
up even with hot and cold baths ! 

A sum of £400 was taken in a single day 
over the refreshment counter in one of 
the Y.M.C.A. marquees in the heart of the 
Sinai Peninsula, and it will give an idea 
of the immense amount of work involved 
to the staff of the Association, when it is 
remembered that all stores had to be 
conveyed from the railhead to the Y.M.C.A. 
on the backs of camels. 

A British soldier writing from the 
■ Adam and Eve ' hut in Mesopotamia 
said, 1 1 should like to comment upon the 
wonderful work the Y.M.C.A. is doing 
here among the troops. In almost every 
large camp there is a Y.M.C.A. hut, a 
veritable haven in the desert, not only for 
canteen, but religious work also. I at- 
tended a service in the hut, and it made a 
good impression on me. We sang the 



30 BLAZING THE TRAIL 

good old hymns, and I am sure we all felt 
refreshed/ 

As might be expected, the Dominions 
have done their full share of pioneering, 
and have blazed the trail in many different 
directions. The Canadians have done a 
great work at Shorncliffe, Sandling, Bram- 
shott, and Witley ; in the Forestry camps 
at home and right up the line in France, 
The Australians on Salisbury Plain, at 
Weymouth, and in many other home 
centres have served their troops splendidly; 
whilst in France, Egypt, the Dardanelles, 
and Palestine their pioneering work has 
been great. The New Zealanders at Sling 
Plantation, Hornchurch, and other centres 
at home, have done equally well, and their 
pioneering work overseas has been most 
efficient. The South Africans have done 
valuable work in the Military Expedition 
to Swakopmund and in East Africa. India 
has made a great contribution to the 



WITH THE RED TRIANGLE 31 

Empire work of the Red Triangle, first of 
all by catering for the needs of British 
troops quartered in India itself, and also 
in Mesopotamia and East Africa, where 
the work has been directed from India, as 
has that for the Indian troops in France. 
Passing reference should also be made here 
to the great programme of work under- 
taken and planned by the Y.M.C.A.'s 
of the United States. In the United 
Kingdom, in France, Russia and Italy, 
as well as in North America, they have pro- 
jected work on an enormous scale, in fact, 
all the Allied countries are closely co- 
operating in the work of the Red Triangle. 
It has been the privilege of the British 
Associations to provide huts for the ex- 
clusive use of Belgian, Serbian, and 
Portuguese troops, and to cater for the 
needs of American and Colonial soldiers in 
hundreds of centres. In London, for 
instance, special facilities have been given 



32 BLAZING THE TRAIL 

to New Zealanders at the Shakespeare 
hut ; we were able to procure for the 
Canadian Y.M.C.A. the magnificent Tivoli 
site on which their fine hostel now stands, 
and to hand over the group of huts to the 
Americans which formed the nucleus of 
the Eagle Hut. The Australians rented and 
furnished the Aldwych Theatre on their own 
account. The New Zealand Y.M.C.A.'s 
made a handsome contribution towards the 
cost of the Shakespeare Hut, and the whole 
of the cost of the Eagle and Beaver Huts 
has been borne by the American and 
Canadian Y.M.C.A.'s, respectively. The 
American and Colonial Associations have 
taken over a number of British huts in 
camps, and in some cases have enlarged 
them. 




THE Y.M.C.A. IN THE ORCHARD AT ALBERT 



CHAPTER III 

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

In my opinion nothing can exceed the value of the 
work which has been and is being done for H.M. 
Forces by the Y.M.C.A. I offer my best wishes 
for continued success. — The Right Hon. H. H. 
Asquith, K.C., M.P. 

The Romance of the Red Triangle is a 
twenty-four hours a day romance, for 
many of its centres never close their 
doors. When we are comfortably sleeping 
at night and in the early hours of the 
morning, Y.M.C.A. workers are hard at 
work on motor patrol conveying leave 
men from station to station or hut to hut, 
and others are on foot meeting the men 
and guiding them to their destination. 
Alighting from the Edinburgh train at 
Leeds very early one morning, it was 
raining and a young Scottish trooper 

c 



34 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

stepped down to the platform from the 
adjoining compartment. We knew we 
were all right, a room having been retained 
for us at the Station Hotel ; but what of 
him ? Had he anywhere to go ? He evi- 
dently had no plans, but at that moment 
a gentleman in civilian attire stepped up 
to him, and without patronising, and in 
the most natural way possible said to him, 
* Have you long to wait ? Have you 
anywhere to go ? ' The lad replied that 
he had several hours to wait for his con- 
nection and had nowhere to go. ' Well, 
come along with me, and I will see you all 
right at the Y.M.C.A.' People who do this 
work or devote themselves, night after 
night, to that of the motor patrols don't 
often get their photos into the papers, 
but they are rendering national service 
of a high order without fee or reward, and 
in almost every case, at the end of a hard 
day's work. 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 35 

The International Hospitality League 
of the Y.M.C.A. is doing similar work on 
a very large scale, and in its kiosks and 
inquiry rooms, not only in London, but in 
Glasgow, Edinburgh, and many of our 
large provincial centres hundreds of thou- 
sands of inquiries are being received and 
answered day by day, whilst the street 
patrol workers have been able to help 
very many who have welcomed their 
assistance. 

We know of no more moving sight than 
one of the great Triage huts in France 
when leave is on. We think of our last 
visit to one such. Three hundred men were 
sleeping there that night, and ' Uncle Joe/ 
the Y.M.C.A. leader, went round the 
bunks last thing to see them safely tucked 
in. As we stood in the main haU we 
thought we understood what was said of 
our Lord that ' when He saw the multitude 
Pe was filled with compassion/ Scores 



36 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

of men were gathered around the piano, 
singing rowdy choruses of the kind loved 
by our Tommies. The coffee queue ex- 
tended the whole length of the room, and 
the men had to buy their tickets from 
Uncle Joe, who had a few words with each 
in homely Lancashire dialect, whilst 
further along the counter a titled lady was 
serving coffee as fast as she could pour it 
out. There were crowds round the tables, 
reading or feeding. We noticed at one 
table a group of men, one of whom was 
cutting up a long French loaf, another 
had just opened a tin of sardines which he 
was sharing round, whilst a third was 
helping his comrades from a tin of pears. 
All were on their way home on leave, or 
returning to the Front, and all were 
merry and happy as British Tommies 
almost invariably are. 

Sometimes in a London hut, or it may 
be in the Y.M.C.A. in Paris, you will come, 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 37 

across one of these Tommies who is down 
and out. He has been on leave and has 
spent or lost all his money, and is down 
on his luck. It is to the Y.M.C.A. he 
turns. A little act of kindness, under such 
circumstances, has often changed a man's 
whole outlook on life. Nearly the whole 
of the service in the Y.M.C.A. hostels is 
rendered voluntarily, and many workers 
who have home or business ties welcome 
this opportunity of doing war service 
that really counts. There is a tendency 
in some quarters to speak disparagingly 
of the voluntary worker, but those who 
know, realise the enormous value of such 
service. No paid workers could have been 
more zealous or more efficient than those 
who have served voluntarily under the 
Red Triangle. The old brewery in Earl 
Street was the first building in London 
to be adapted for sleeping purposes, but 
the 'Euston' was the first Y.M.C.A. 



38 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

hostel to be built. One of the largest is 
the Shakespeare Hut which was built on 
the site of the proposed National Shake- 
speare Memorial Theatre, kindly loaned 
for the purpose. The huge building by 
London Bridge was lent by the city of 
London. Many of the huts occupy central 
and important sites, as for instance, the 
station huts at King's Cross, Victoria, and 
Waterloo, — and the station hut often means 
the last touch of home before men go 
overseas, and that makes the work and 
the personality of the workers all the 
more important. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

This work has been admirably done both at home 
and at the Front. Its spiritual and material value 
to the men lies beyond all reckoning, and the 
services of its personnel are deeply appreciated by 
the men themselves. — The Right Hon. A. J. 
Balfour, O.M., M.P. 

On August 4, 1914, our plan for war work 
was ready, but the ' sinews of war ' were 
lacking. Little could be done without 
money. In our extremity we laid the 
whole position before one of our most 
generous leaders and supporters, and told 
him of the opportunity we saw facing the 
Y.M.C.A. * If we are to seize the oppor- 
tunity/ we said, ' it is absolutely necesary 
we should secure immediately twenty-five 
thousand pounds ! ' He looked up and 
smiled indulgently — ' Twenty-five thou- 



4 o THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

sand pounds ! ' he cried ; ' you couldn't pos- 
sibly raise three thousand pounds at a time 
like this ; the thing 's impossible ! ' ' Impos- 
sible or not/ was the reply, ' it must be 
done. We mustn't even stop to think of 
the future of the Y.M.C.A. Everything is 
at stake, and even if we have to sell every 
building and every stick of furniture we 
possess we must go forward now ! ' That 
very day a large number of telegrams and 
letters were sent out from Headquarters 
to friends all over the country — the first 
war emergency appeal of the Red Triangle 
— and within a few days the whole of the 
twenty-five thousand pounds had been 
raised, and we were appealing for another 
fifty thousand pounds, until at the time 
of writing, in August 1918, the war fund 
has reached the total of nearly two and a 
half millions sterling. That is a small 
sum compared with the amounts raised for 
Y.M.C.A. war work in the United States. 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 41 

Their first appeal brought in five million 
pounds, the second more than twelve 
millions, and their appeal a year later, in 
October 1918, is for twenty millions sterling. 
Our American friends gave us a hundred 
thousand pounds from the amount raised 
by their second war work appeal, a generous 
and much appreciated gift. People who 
know little of the facts are sometimes 
inclined to criticise what they regard as 
the huge war expenditure of the British 
Y.M.C.A/s, but a moment's reflection will 
make it clear that it has been little short 
of a miracle of finance to carry out such an 
enormous programme of work at a total 
cost of only about one-third of the cost to 
Britain alone of a single day of war. We 
have always been short of money, have 
always had a big overdraft at the bank, 
and that largely because we have had to 
finance a huge business concern without 
capital. Our war fund has been secured 



42 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

partly as a result of skilful advertising, 
partly through personal solicitation and in 
response to postal appeals. Flag Days 
and Hut Weeks also proved valuable 
agencies for raising money. The full- 
page Y.M.C.A. advertisements in The 
Times and other papers were something 
quite new in religious and social work 
advertising, though the method has since 
been widely adopted by other organisa- 
tions. 

Many touching stories are told concern- 
ing gifts to the war fund, gifts, many of 
which have not been secured as a result of 
cleverly drawn advertisements, but because 
the contributors have been touched directly 
or indirectly by the work itself. A boy 
wrote home from Flanders, ' Tell Dad if 
he has any money to spare to give it to the 
Y.M.C.A. as a thankoffering for what they 
are doing for us chaps out here/ One 
of our centres had been nearly destroyed 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 43 

by a Zeppelin bomb. It was rebuilt and 
the day came for the reopening. A lady 
was present and expressed herself thus : 
1 1 wanted to be here to-day, if only to 
thank you for what your Association has 
done for my boy. When the war broke 
out/ said she, ' he went to the Crystal 
Palace for his training, and found the 
Y.M.C.A. there an inestimable boon. He 
was sent to Blandford to complete his 
training, and the Y.M.C.A. was there. 
He was drafted out to Gallipoli, and to his 
amazement he found the Y.M.C.A. on the 
Peninsula. He was wounded and sent to 
Suez, where once more the Y.M.C.A. was 
a great help to him, and yesterday/ she 
continued, ' I received a letter from him 
from Alexandria saying he was conval- 
escent, and spending the whole of his spare 
time in the central building of the 
Association/ It is that personal touch 
that has made the appeal of the Red 



44 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

Triangle one of the most popular appeals of 
the war. 

A lady called one day with a novel 
suggestion. She had been reading a state- 
ment attributed to the Kaiser, in which the 
All Highest is alleged to have said that if 
the worst came to the worst every dog and 
cat in Germany would be armed in defence 
of the Fatherland. ' If the dogs and cats 
of Germany are going to do that for their 
country/ she said, ' why shouldn't the dogs 
and cats of England pay for one of your 
huts ? ' Quite frankly there did not 
appear to be much money in the scheme, 
but it could do no harm, so we encouraged 
it ! Imagine our surprise when a few 
days later the same lady walked in with a 
cheque for four hundred and fifty pounds. 
There was one gift of five pounds, all the 
rest had been given in smaller amounts, 
and altogether upwards of two thousand 
dogs and cats — or their masters and 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 45 

mistresses — had contributed. A few weeks 
later the fund was closed, at just over one 
thousand pounds, and there has been no 
more useful centre of Y.M.C.A. war work 
than the ' Dogs and Cats Hut ' at Rouen, 
paid for entirely by this fund. 

The Boys and Girls fund has reached 
upwards of twenty thousand pounds. We 
had been speaking to the boys at Harrow 
School, and the suggestion had been thrown 
out that it would be a good plan to have 
a ' Harrow ' Hut at the Front. At the 
close of the meeting the headmaster, 
supporting the suggestion, said he would 
give the collection in chapel the following 
Sunday to the fund. The head boy 
approached him afterwards and said, ' I 
think, Sir, it would be a mistake to make 
a collection for the Y.M.C.A. on Sunday. 
If you do the boys will think they have 
done their bit, and won't bother any 
further. Won't you let us make a whip 



46 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

up round the houses and see what we can 
do ? * Thus it was agreed, and the five 
hundred pounds, which in those days was 
the cost of a hut, was raised in less than a 
week. We have seen that hut in France, 
and know how much it was appreciated. 
During the German advance in Picardy it 
had to be temporarily abandoned, but 
fortunately was speedily occupied again. 

In the early days of the Euston hut, 
the vicar of a neighbouring parish was 
keenly interested, and told the children in 
his day school what he had seen in the hut. 
At the close of his address a deputation 
of the older children waited on him and 
told him they were interested in what he 
told them, and would much like to help 
the Y.M.C.A. in its work for the soldiers. 
' You help ? ' queried the vicar ; ■ how 
can you help ? ' He knew how poor they 
were. To his surprise they had their 
scheme ready, and their plans cut and 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 47 

dried. ' This time every year/ said the 
spokesman, ' we put by our pennies and 
our ha'pennies for our annual treat. We 
don't feel like having a treat this year 
when all this terrible fighting is taking 
place. We would rather give the money 
to the Y.M.C.A. to spend on the soldiers 
and sailors.' A few days later, the leader 
of the Euston hut was sitting at a table 
in the central hall when his attention was 
attracted by a group of ragged children, 
standing round the entrance. Curiously 
they would peer inside and then step back, 
until two or three bolder than the others 
walked right in as if the whole place 
belonged to them. That was too much for 
the leader. He went up to them and 
cried, ' You must run away ; this place 
isn't for boys and girls, it 's for soldiers and 
sailors.' Looking up into his face a little 
ragged youngster retorted, ' Please, sir, 
we 've given our money towards this show, 



48 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

and we want to see how it 's run ! ' On 
inquiry, it was ascertained that the children 
belonged to one of the poorest of the 
schools in the north of London, and out of 
their poverty they had given no less than 
thirty shillings, nearly the whole of it in 
pennies and farthings. Many memorial 
gifts have been received, and a hut that 
will be an inspiration and help to tens of 
thousands, is surely one of the most 
suitable of memorials. 

Business firms and merchant princes 
have given their thousands ; others, with 
equal generosity, have contributed shillings. 
In the Channel Islands, there was a fish- 
hawker, named Richards, who eked out a 
slender livelihood by selling fish on the 
streets of Jersey. The coming of the war 
hit him so hard that he was compelled 
to leave for France to seek other employ- 
ment. He got a job under the contractors 
who were building the hutments in the 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 49 

Harfleur Valley. He did well, and eventu- 
ally returned home to Jersey. The Sunday 
after his return, his minister was taking 
up special collections for the hut fund. 
Richards had found the Red Triangle 
huts at Havre a great boon, and on enter- 
ing the church at the evening service, 
handed his minister a little paper packet 
containing coins. The padre fingered the 
parcel and said to himself, * He has given 
six pennies, a generous gift, too, under 
the circumstances ! ' Imagine his surprise 
on opening the packet to find there six 
half-crowns. He said, ' You ought not to 
give so much ; you can't possibly afford 
it/ ' When I remember aU the Y.M.C.A. 
did for me when a stranger in France 
and homeless/ was his reply, ' I can't 
possibly do less, and wish I could give 
more/ 

A flower-seller at a popular seaside 
holiday resort for many months has given 

D 



50 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

to the local Y.M.C.A. hut a shillingsworth 
of flowers each week, as a thankoffering 
for what the Association has done for her 
husband and son. 

At Taunton a farm labourer called at 
the back door of the house of the president 
of the local Y.M.C.A., and said he wanted 
to help the war fund. It was the only 
thing he could do to help the men at the 
Front. He had tried to enlist several 
times, but they would not have him. He 
laid on the table fifty one-pound notes, 
and went back to his work on the farm. 
Inquiries elicited the fact that he had 
given practically the whole of his savings, 
and had done it in spite of his employer's 
urgent advice to the contrary. 

At the close of a meeting held by one 
of our workers, an elderly lady came to 
him and said if he would go to her house 
she would give him a sovereign. He went, 
and she gave him the coin, and then closing 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 51 

the door of her private room, said, * And 
now I am going to give you the most 
precious possession I have in the world/ 
Her voice choked with emotion as she 
proceeded, ' Years, many years ago, I 
was to have been married. The arrange- 
ments were made, the day fixed, and 
the ring bought, and — then he died ! ' 
And she sobbed as she spoke. Going to 
a bureau she took out a little box and, 
handing it to him, said, ' The wedding 
ring is in there. I have kept it all these 
years, but I promised the Lord I would 
only keep it until He showed me what He 
would have me do with it, and He told me 
while you were speaking. I give it to 
you for the Y.M.C.A. and for the boys/ 
and she turned away utterly broken up. 
Thousands of incidents could be related 
of equal interest to the foregoing, did 
space permit, and all these incidents com- 
bine to give a personal interest to the fund. 



52 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

We can only add that the greatest possible 
care has been taken to administer the 
fund wisely and so avoid waste, or any- 
thing that savours of extravagance. Of 
course, Y.M.C.A. finance has come in for 
criticism. Certain people who have visited 
the huts, and have seen the enormous 
business there transacted have come to 
the conclusion that either very large 
profits are being made, or that the business 
methods of the Association leave much to be 
desired. The question has frequently been 
asked, ' What is done with the profits ? ' 
and the fiction has got abroad that the 
Y.M.C.A. publishes no accounts and is 
amassing huge sums of money. The real 
position is easily stated : — 

The Y.M.C.A. does not do trading 
for trading's sake, but because through 
its trading department it is the better 
enabled to meet the needs of the 
troops, and also because profits on 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 53 

trading mean further extension. So 
rapid has been the development of the 
war work of the Y.M.C.A., that not 
only has every penny of profit been 
spent on the maintenance and develop- 
ment of this work for soldiers and 
sailors, but it has been necessary to 
raise large sums of money in sub- 
scriptions to meet the ever-increasing 
demand for extension. Every new 
centre means, or may mean, an addi- 
tional burden on the central fund or 
on the divisional funds for which the 
National Council is ultimately respon- 
sible. First, there is the cost of the 
hut, which may mean £750 or may run 
into thousands — it all depends upon 
size and site. The initial cost may be 
defrayed by an individual gift to the 
central war fund, but usually to make 
the hut large enough for its purpose, 
additional money has to be spent, 



54 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

whilst the furnishing will probably cost 
from one to three hundred pounds, or 
more. Also, it must carry stock to 
the value of a hundred pounds or 
possibly much more if it is a big camp. 
A very big turnover in a Triangle hut 
may represent a very small profit, e.g. 
there are enormous sales of stamps and 
postal orders, and all these are sold for 
actual cost, and, what is more, the 
Association has to bear the loss of 
shortages. Then there are the things 
the Y.M.C.A. does free of any charges 
whatever, e.g. there are no club fees 
and no charges for admission to con- 
certs, lectures, or entertainments in the 
ordinary hut. Free writing paper and 
envelopes are at the present time cost- 
ing more than £90,000 a year. Thou- 
sands of pounds are spent on cricket 
and football outfits, games generally, 
books, pictures, and literature for free 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 55 

distribution. Hot drinks and refresh- 
ments are given free to the walking 
wounded on a very large scale, and 
practically every one of the two thou- 
sand war Y.M.C.A.'s keeps ' open 
house ' at Christmas. The work of 
the Y.M.C.A. for the relatives of 
wounded is very costly, especially in 
France, many hostels being main- 
tained for that purpose. Motor trans- 
port is an expensive item for which 
there is no return, and very large sums 
of money are spent on lectures and 
educational work. It is estimated that 
the Y.M.C.A. educational programme 
in France alone may ultimately cost 
the Association fifty thousand pounds a 
year. When the request has come to 
open a new centre, the determining 
factor has been, ' Is it needed ? ' not 
' Will it pay ? ' Indeed many huts 
in isolated centres cannot possibly be 



56 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

made to pay, and yet they mean every- 
thing to the men who use them. The 
spending department of the Associa- 
tion has been built up with the greatest 
care. A body of well-known business 
men meets for hours every week and 
watches expenditure as a cat watches 
a mouse. The Acting Treasurer of the 
War Emergency Fund is a partner in 
a big firm of Indian Merchants, and 
devotes himself with untiring energy 
and conspicuous ability to the super- 
vision of accounts and to the expendi- 
ture. The accounts are audited by a 
leading firm of chartered accountants, 
and the audited statement of receipts 
and expenditure together with a balance 
sheet, is published in The Times and 
other papers every six months. In the 
canteens it is a matter of principle to 
give full value for money spent, but 
towards the war services the profits 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 57 

made have been equal to a sum of 
ten shillings for every pound contri- 
buted by the public. Owing chiefly to 
the enormous stores that have to be 
maintained in France and Overseas 
generally, the Bank overdraft of the 
war fund has often reached four and 
five hundred thousand pounds. It is 
thus not difficult to see what is done 
with the profits. The Y.M.C.A. might, 
had it so chosen, have feathered its nest 
during the war, but with a sublime, 
though by no means a reckless disregard 
of the future it stepped right into the 
breach, and went straight forward to 
meet the national need. 
As a Y.M.C.A. we pride ourselves on 
the business management of our work. 
We insist on business methods being 
adopted, and we do not mix our business 
with philanthropy — the Association hut 
is not a charity as far as its business side 



58 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

is concerned. The average hut in a large 
camp is expected to pay its way, so that 
subscriptions from the general public can 
>e applied to the extension of the work 
and to the maintenance of centres that 
cannot be self-supporting. 

The War Office, in the early stages of 
the war, asked us to pay a rebate of 
10 per cent, on the gross takings of the 
refreshment department. After full con- 
sideration, we came to the conclusion that 
we could only do this by extracting the 
money from the pockets of the men, who 
for the most part are miserably paid, by 
paying it out of subscriptions given by the 
public, or by limiting the extension of the 
work. Neither alternative seemed desir- 
able or in the interests of the men, and after 
many conferences with the Quartermaster- 
General's department at the War Office, it 
was agreed, by mutual consent and at the 
suggestion of the War Office, to refer the 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 59 

matter for decision to the Secretary of 
State for War. It was at the time Lord 
Kitchener was in Gallipoli, and Mr. Asquith 
was personally in charge. At a conference 
at Downing Street the representatives of 
the Board of Control Regimental Institutes 
stated their case, and we had the oppor- 
tunity of replying. Mr. Asquith took 
several weeks to consider the question in 
all its bearings, and ultimately gave the 
decision entirely in our favour, and decided 
for the duration of the war we should not 
be asked to pay the rebate. Later on, 
the matter was reopened by Lord Derby, 
and eventually it was found necessary 
for the Y.M.C.A. to pay 6 per cent, on 
their gross takings in huts on Military 
ground, to regimental funds, and this 
is a great tax on its resources. Most 
of the huts are loaned free to the 
Military for church parades and ^military 
lectures. 



60 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

The figures of the Red Triangle are 
colossal, and yet figures by themselves 
fail to give an adequate idea of the magni- 
tude of the work, and for obvious reasons 
it is impossible to make those statistics 
complete. On a given date it was ascer- 
tained that upwards of forty-five thousand 
workers were giving regular service to the 
war work of the Y.M.C.A. By August 31, 
1918, 929,590,430 pieces of stationery had 
been sent out from Y.M.C.A. Headquarters 
in London for distribution amongst the 
men of His Majesty's Forces. The 
stationery bill by the summer of 1918 had 
risen to the rate of upwards of £90,000 
per annum. 

In two months one hundred and five 
tents were sent out to replace the 
huts and tents lost in Picardy and 
Flanders. 

In eighteen months, Triangle House, 
London, the Headquarters of our Trading 



THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 61 

Department, sent out to the Y.M.C.A. 
overseas : — 

875 Gramophones and 8386 Records. 

322 Pianos and Organs. 

572 Billiard and Bagatelle Tables. 
1,341 Sets of Boxing Gloves. 

108 Optical Lanterns. 
10,188 Sets of Draughts. 
1,335 Sets of Chess. 
3,140 Sets of Dominoes. 
4,263 Footballs. 
1,080 Sets of Quoits. 

657 Sets of Cricket. 
4,992 Extra Balls. 
1,540 Extra Bats. 
1,798 Hockey Sticks. 

520 Balls. 

426 Golf Balls. 

100 Tennis Sets. 

330 Tennis Racquets. 
2,364 Tennis Balls. 
61 Sets Bowls. 

358 Badminton Sets. 
50 Baseball Sets, 



62 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 

It will be noted that the items in this 
list are not trading goods to be sold at a 
profit, but excepting in the case of some of 
the billiard tables, are non-remunerative, 
and provided absolutely free for the use 
of the men serving overseas. 



CHAPTER V 

THE LADIES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 

I have received Her Majesty's commands to convey 
to you an expression of the Queen's sincere thanks 
for the interesting information you have given 
regarding the work which is being done by the 
Young Men's Christian Association among the men 
of the Army and Navy. 

Her Majesty is much pleased with the specimens 
of writing-papers and envelopes, and publications, 
which you have sent for her acceptance. 

Her Majesty feels sure that the useful work which 
is being carried on by the Young Men's Christian 
Association in so many different centres is highly 
appreciated not only by the soldiers, but also by 
the community. — Her Majesty the Queen. 

Before the war it was one of our stock 
sayings that the Y.M.C.A. was a work 
' for young men by young men/ and one 
must recognise the fact that the man who 
is a man — virile, strong, athletic — is the 
one to whose leadership men will most 
readily respond. But in the early days 

63 



64 THE LADIES OF 

of the war most of our young male workers 
joined up; whether we liked it or not we 
had to get the help of ladies, and our 
more enterprising leaders felt that after 
all there were some things in Y.M.C.A. 
hut work ladies could do almost as well 
as men. Things have moved since then, 
and now we know that much of the work 
can be done infinitely better by women. 
In many cases women have been entrusted 
with the actual leadership of huts, and have 
carried through the duties magnificently. 
The Red Triangle has given the woman 
her niche in the Y.M.C.A., and for the 
great programme that awaits us after the 
war her help will be indispensable. It 
has, moreover, given the woman who had 
home claims an opportunity of doing war 
work that really counts, in her spare time. 
The Queen and Queen Alexandra have 
been graciously interested in the work of 
the ladies of the Red Triangle, and many 



jfil 



■% 



jr.: 



THE RED TRIANGLE 65 

of the ladies of the Royal House have 
rendered conspicuous personal service, 
amongst whom might be mentioned 
H.R.H. Princess Christian, H.R.H. Princess 
Louise, H.R.H. Princess Patricia of Con- 
naught, and H.H. Princess Marie Louise, 
whilst H.H. Princess Helena Victoria as 
Lady President has given time and strength 
to the work without reserve, and we owe 
very much to her. In the camps, ladies 
have given the home touch that means so 
much to the men — games, music, decora- 
tions, and flowers have come within their 
domain ; they have managed the libraries, 
and have in most cases taken full responsi- 
bility for the refreshment department. 
Their personal influence has been invalu- 
able. We remember visiting a camp some- 
where in France. It seemed to us the 
roughest camp we had ever seen. The 
leader told us of an encounter he had with 
one of the worst of the men on the occa- 



66 THE LADIES OF 

sion of his first visit to the place. He had 
just got his tent erected, and the man 
chancing to see it asked what it was. 
When told that it was the Y.M.C.A., he 

replied, ' You b men are just what we 

d men b well want/ and that was 

the language of the camp. Eighteen 
months later we were there again and the 
camp was like another place, so great was 
the change for the better. The CO. told 
us he attributed that change almost entirely 
to the ladies of the Red Triangle. It so 
happened that one of the ladies committed 
an unpardonable military offence. She 
returned to England two or three days 
before her permit expired. Later on, 
application was made in the usual way for 
the renewal of her permit. The General 
concerned, who is no longer in France, 
returned the application with the words 
written across it over his initials — ' Keep 
this woman out/ The Base Commandant 



THE RED TRIANGLE 67 

sent it in again having written on it — 
■ Talk about keeping this woman out, she 
is of more value to me than truckloads of 
parsons and chaplains ! ' That was his 
way of putting it, not ours. We have the 
greatest possible admiration for the work 
of the chaplains at the Front. There is no 
finer body of men on active service to-day, 
and it is a privilege we greatly esteem to be 
permitted to co-operate with them and to be 
of some service to them in their great work. 
The ladies have always been ready to 
share the risks with the men, and there 
are quite a number who have made the 
supreme sacrifice, including Miss Smallpage, 
killed by shrapnel in one of our munition 
huts in England ; Miss Betty Stevenson, 
killed in an air attack in France ; Miss 
Edith Howe, who died of cerebro-spinal 
meningitis ; and Miss Lee, who lost her 
life in a fire in one of the huts on Salisbury 
Plain. 



68 THE LADIES OF 

In one of the great bases in France there 
is a small camp in which at one time there 
were boys only. They were too young to 
fight, their job day by day was the prosaic 
one of filling up petrol cans. One of these 
little chaps had badly hurt his hand, and 
it seemed to him the natural thing to go for 
sympathy and help to the lady of the Red 
Triangle. A brief examination convinced 
her that the damage was serious, and she 
bade him go to the doctor, whose tent was 
just across the way. Very grudgingly he 
trudged across to the doctor, but a few 
minutes later returned with the request 
that she would look at the damaged hand 
and see if the doctor had attended to it 
properly. She replied that it would never 
do to interfere with the doctor's work and, 
moreover, the doctor had no doubt done 
it far better than she could have done. 
Five times the lad came back with the 
request, ' O Missis ! do look at my hand 



THE RED TRIANGLE 69 

and see if he 's done it right/ The fifth 
time he brought with him as an ally the 
Y.M.C.A. secretary in charge, who said, 
1 If I were you, Miss, I would look at his 
hand. The little chap will never be happy 
until you do/ Then she undid the 
bandages, looked at the dressing, and 
bandaging it up again said, ' There, it 's 
just as I told you ; the doctor has done it 
far better than I could ; run away and be 
quite happy about it ! ' He went away, 
but returned again a few minutes later, 
and that time his eyes were full of tears as 
he cried, ' O Missis ! I did think you 'd 
have kissed me when you saw how bad it 
was/ and, like the good woman she was, she 
kissed him as his mother would have done. 
Let no one think that 's what the ladies 
of the Red Triangle usually do, for it 's 
not, and yet in that simple story you have 
the whole secret of the success of the war 
work of the Y.M.C.A. Time, and time 



70 LADIES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 

again, one has been through every base 
camp in France, and has traversed the 
whole British line in France and Flanders, 
and wherever one has gone one has found 
the men yearning for sympathy and 
longing for home. Not that they want 
to return home until this fight ends in 
victory, for out there they have learned 
what war means ; they see it robbed of its 
romance, and they are determined to see 
it through ; they fight that this war may 
end war. 

With unfailing loyalty to the high aims 
of the Red Triangle and with conspicuous 
ability ladies have served the Y.M.C.A., 
and through the Association the men of 
His Majesty's Forces and the munition 
workers, in all parts of the United Kingdom, 
in France, and in every part of the Empire, 
and have won for themselves a permanent 
place in the movement, whatever its future 
may be. 



CHAPTER VI 

'GUNGA DIN' OF THE RED TRIANGLE 

' You and your Association seem to me to be truly 
hitting the nail on the head, and working for the 
good of our soldier-lads, one and all. I have 
watched the Y.M.C.A. procedure at many camps, 
and have found it exactly adapted to the wants 
of large numbers of young men taken temporarily 
away from their homes and normal associations.' — 
General Sir Ian Hamilton. 

One of the most striking of Kipling's 
characters was Gunga Din, the Indian water- 
carrier. He was not a fighting man, but 
when fighting was taking place he was in 
the thick of it, risking his life that he might 
carry water to slake the thirst of the 
fighting man. ' Gunga Din ' was the 
appropriate name given to one of our 
leaders in France by a British Tommy. 
Those who do not know are sometimes 
inclined to sneer at the Y.M.C.A. man for 

71 



72 ' GUNGA DIN ' OF 

having a ' cushy ' job, but it is hard work 
from start to finish. His job is never 
done and very often is attended with 
considerable risk. His work may carry 
him right into the front line trenches and 
though it does not take him ' over the top/ 
yet, unlike the soldier, he has not the 
privilege of hitting back. His day's work 
will vary according to the camp. In all 
probability he will have to be up early in 
the morning, to get the coffee ready. 
The hut must be cleaned, and there will be 
a lot of canteen work to be done. The 
buying will occupy some time, and then 
there will be the evening programme to 
arrange and carry through. He must 
maintain personal touch with the men using 
the hut, so that the ideal leader must be 
half a dozen men rolled into one. 

Our greatest difficulty during the war 
has been that of getting a sufficiency of 
workers of the right type. Every male 



THE RED TRIANGLE 73 

worker is registered with the Director of 
Recruiting, and we are unable to recruit 
new men classified A between the ages of 
18 and 52, or 18 and 45 for service overseas. 
Twelve members of the Y.M.C.A. have 
won the Victoria Cross, 3 the D.S.O., 
33 the M.C., 25 the D.C.M., and 53 the M.M., 
whilst registered at Headquarters are the 
names of 1223 who have made the supreme 
sacrifice. We think of many whose war 
work for the Y.M.C.A. has earned the title 
of ' Gunga Din/ as, for example, the young 
leader of the New Zealand work in France. 
He looks a boy, but is a genius for organis- 
ing, and the pioneer of the work of the Red 
Triangle in advanced positions. Another 
man who has the instincts of the pioneer is 
the leader of the Australian workers in 
Egypt and Palestine, and yet another, a 
well-known Y.M.C.A. worker who, after 
doing good service in England in the 
early days of the war, went to represent 



74 ' GUNGA DIN ' OF 

Headquarters in Egypt. Torpedoed en 
route he took up his new work with 
characteristic enthusiasm and made good. 
Hundreds have rendered equally valuable 
service, so that it would be invidious to 
mention names. 

In the great retreat, it was the 
D.A.Q.M.G. of the — Corps who asked 
us to open up a Stragglers' Post at 
Westoutre. ' You are the people who can 
cheer up the men/ said he ; 'I want you to 
get hold of the stragglers before they 
become deserters/ It was ' Gunga Din ' 
he needed, but this time with cocoa-urn 
instead of water-bottle, and it was only an 
old bank to which our workers fixed their 
Red Triangle, but it was just what was 
needed. A bursting shell forced them to 
quit, but half an hour later they had 
opened up again in the village shop, op- 
posite the church, and the mayor thanked 
them later on for their successful efforts. 



THE RED TRIANGLE 75 

Our officers' hut at Romerin was set on 
fire by a shell; shells were falling fast, 
and the larger hut soon became untenable, 
but the Y.M.C. A. man was running his show 
in the open under a tree, and was as busy 
as ever. The ubiquitous ' Ford ' did its 
bit, and its load would sometimes consist 
of the Divisional Secretary himself, one or 
two other workers or Belgian refugees, a 
big caterer's boiler, a tea-urn, together with 
cases of biscuits and cigarettes. Thus 
equipped, it would proceed to some 
advanced dressing - station. Sometimes 
there would only be a sergeant and orderlies 
in charge, heroically doing their best to 
help the wounded, and the mere presence 
of a man like one of our secretaries gave 
them confidence, whilst the steaming hot 
drinks he soon had ready gave new courage 
to the wounded men who thronged the 
CCS. A great work of the ' Gunga Din ' 
type was [done on the Nieppe - Bailleul 



76 ' GUNGA DIN ' OF 

road during the retreat. What an amazing 
scene it must have been ; an endless stream 
of refugees and wounded ; units lost ; 
batteries firing ; men who had been for 
days without food, moving about like 
ghosts and digging themselves in at the 
side of the road. The Huns were only 
about eight hundred yards further along 
the road, and our soldiers fired as they 
walked. For three nights none of our 
workers even thought of going to bed ; 
they stood by with cars ready to help where 
and how they were most needed, and gave 
help to soldiers and refugees alike. At 
dressing and casualty clearing stations they 
gave emergency help. At Remy, for 
instance, one of our men was told off to 
undress the wounded and rig them out 
in new pyjamas, whilst another made 
himself useful in cleaning the floors. Hot 
drinks were given out freely in all these 
centres just behind the line. 



THE RED TRIANGLE 77 

Following the British victory at Messines 
on June 7, 1917, a Leeds minister serving 
on the staff of the Y.M.C.A. wrote home 
describing the work for the walking 
wounded as he had seen it : — 

' It was about three o'clock in the 
morning when the signal to advance was 
given, and the boys went over the 
parapet. About two hours later the 
wounded began to arrive at our hospital 
in ambulance vans. It had been pre- 
viously arranged that only as far as 
possible walking cases — men slightly 
wounded — should be dealt with at our 
station, and the expeditious and 
efficient way in which their wounds 
were attended to reflected great credit 
on the medical staff. As soon as they 
left the dressing-room they were passed 
on to our Y.M.C.A., where we supplied 
them with various kinds of refresh- 
ments free. It was my great privilege 



?8 ' GUNGA DIN ' OF 

to serve the first patient, who had a 
broken arm, with a freshly-made cup 
of tea and a sandwich, and never shall 
I forget his look and words of appre- 
ciation. Some were too ill to eat any- 
thing for a time, especially those who 
had been gassed or were suffering from 
shell-shock, but they were very glad 
of a seat on the grass in the shade of our 
tent. Some were so badly wounded 
that they were unable to speak, while 
others were half deaf and dumb as the 
result of shock. It was pathetic to 
see such men scribbling their request 
for a drink on a piece of paper. All 
were loud in their praise of the Y.M.C. A. 
and many were quite overcome when 
they realised that the tea, lemonade, 
cigarettes, and various kinds of eatables 
were provided free. One Scottish New 
Zealander, whose father is a well-known 
seed merchant in Edinburgh, declared 



THE RED TRIANGLE 79 

that the Y.M.C.A. was the greatest 
thing in the war. In addition to 
attending to the needs of the " inner 
man" — and some of them we had to 
feed like babies, as both hands were 
wounded — we wrote letters and field 
cards for them, and tried in every 
possible way to add to their comfort. 
The spirit manifested by the majority 
of them was simply splendid, and 
scarcely ever did they refer to their 
own suffering and hardships/ 



CHAPTER VII 

IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

It has given me great pleasure to learn of the 
development of the Y.M.C.A. work in France and 
England during the last six months. In particular 
I am very glad to hear of the successful growth of 
the experiment begun at Aire. 

No one can be long in this country without realis- 
ing the immense value of your organisation, and the 
constant extension of your activities itself testifies 
to the high regard in which it is held by our 
soldiers. — Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. 

The history of the British Empire has been 
written over again, and written in blood, 
in the valleys of the Somme, the Ancre, 
and the Scarpe. Tens of thousands of 
our noblest and best lie buried in these 
valleys or on the tableland of Peronne, 
situated between the insignificant rivers 
that have within the past few months 
earned a world-wide notoriety. No one 
can visit a modern battlefield without 

80 




GEORGE WILLIAMS HOUSE' IN THE FRONT TRENCHES 








A HALF-WAY HOUSE TO THE TRENCHES 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 81 

realising something of the appalling waste 
of war. Towns and villages have been 
blotted out of existence, or are marked 
to-day by a few unrecognisable ruins. 
Thanks to the efficiency of British organisa- 
tion, excellent roads were quickly estab- 
lished right through the stricken district, 
and it was impossible to traverse any of 
them without marvelling at the obstacles 
overcome and the successes gained. The 
road, for instance, from Albert to 
Bapaume, through Pozieres, Le Sars, and 
Warlincourt, passing close by Contal- 
maison and Martincourt, was contested 
almost yard by yard, and the same thing 
may be said of the road that leads along 
the bank of the Ancre from Albert past 
the Leipzig Redoubt, near Thiepval and 
Beaumont Hamel, through Achiet-le-Grand 
to Bapaume, or the one from Peronne 
through Le Transloy. 

It was in December 1916 that I paid 



82 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

my first visit to the valley of the Somme. 
The scene was dreary beyond description. 
Many villages known to us by name as the 
scenes of desperate fighting were a name 
only. Hardly a vestige of a house or 
cottage remained where many had been 
before the war. Here and there one could 
see the entrance to a cellar ; the charred 
stump of a strafed tree ; the remains of a 
garden ; or a bit of a cemetery. Every- 
thing else was churned up into the most 
appalling mud. 

One day I had tea with an Army com- 
mander who has done great things since 
then, and he showed me a series of photo- 
graphs — the most interesting I have ever 
seen, which were taken the day before my 
visit, by our airmen, over the German 
lines. For seventeen and a half miles 
back, the enemy, with infinite care and 
patience, had constructed trenches, 'and/ 
said the Commander, ' every time we 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 83 

destroy his front line trench he constructs 
another one in the rear/ 'But/ I cried, 
' if this kind of thing goes on, and unless 
the unexpected happens, the war must 
surely continue indefinitely/ His only 
reply was, ' Is it not always the unexpected 
that happens in war ? ' I was back again 
in Picardy in the summer of 1917, and the 
unexpected had happened. The whole 
of the seventeen and a half miles of 
trenches were in the hands of the British ! 
The enemy had retired to the much 
advertised ' Hindenburg Line/ and leaving 
nothing to chance, was tirelessly, ceaselessly 
massing and training his men, getting 
together huge reserves of munitions, 
husbanding his resources in every possible 
way, and preparing, always preparing day 
and night for his next great move. Mean- 
while, Italy's defences had to be strength- 
ened by troops we could ill-afford to spare 
from our Western front, and Russia, in 



84 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

loyalty to whom we first entered the war, 
failed us altogether, German intrigue being 
the underlying cause in each case. In his 
great advance in March and April 1918 
he did not achieve all he set out to do by 
any means, but his gains were enormous. 
It makes one sad to think of the territory 
we had temporarily to relinquish to the 
Hun in Picardy, even though the country 
itself was not of any intrinsic value. 
The land is desolate, and the enemy 
ruined every village and hamlet, every 
farm and cottage, before his retreat. 
Ninety-three Red Triangle centres — huts, 
marquees, cellars, dug-outs, and ' strafed ' 
houses had to be abandoned in Picardy 
alone — most of them destroyed before they 
fell into the hands of the Germans. 

During the first visit to the battlefields 
of the Somme in the winter of 1916, the 
outstanding feature of the landscape was 
the mud and the general desolation. In 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 85 

the summer of 1917 the scenes of desolation 
were as great as ever, but there was a 
difference — the roads were in excellent 
condition and bridges had been replaced. 
There were shell-holes everywhere and the 
countryside was strewn with dud shells ; 
barbed wire entanglements ; with here and 
there a stranded tank that had had to be 
abandoned in the mud ; the remains of 
trenches and dug-outs or the cages in which 
the Huns had collected their British 
prisoners. There were no domestic animals 
to be seen, and no civilians. The whole 
district from Albert to Peronne, to Bapaume 
or to Arras, was one huge cemetery, and 
one saw side by side the elaborate cross 
that marked the burying place of German 
dead, the smaller cross with the tricolour 
on it, that marked the last resting-place of 
the soldier of France, and everywhere for 
miles and miles could be seen the little plain 
brown crosses of wood, that marked the 



86 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

spot where lay our own loved dead. We 
climbed to the top of the famous Butte of 
Warlincourt that so often changed hands 
in the course of desperate fighting, and 
there on the top were those little brown 
crosses. We stood at the edge of the vast 
crater of La Boiselle that inaugurated the 
first battle of the Somme and saw in its 
depths several of those little symbols of 
our Christian faith, but looking away 
across the desolation of the battlefield one 
marvelled at the efforts of nature to hide 
up the ravages of war. There were the 
most glorious masses of colour every- 
where — the colour given by the wild 
flowers of the battlefields. One felt one 
had never seen more vivid blue than that 
of the acres of cornflowers which rivalled 
the hues of the gentian of the Alps. It 
may have been imagination, but looking 
out from the Butte of Warlincourt over 
miles of poppies, one felt one had never 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 87 

seen such vivid red, and instinctively those 
words came into one's mind : 

' Cross that liftest up my head, 

I dare not seek to fly from thee ; 
I lay in dust life's glory dead, 
And from the ground there blossoms red, 
Life that shall endless be/ 

The wild flowers of Picardy have bloomed 
over British graves again in the summer of 
1918, though German, not British, eyes 
saw them during the early months, but 
those flowers speak of eternal hope, and 
tell us that if we but do our part, the 
sacrifice of our bravest and best will not 
have been made in vain. 

Amid the ruins of Picardy the Y.M.C.A 
did some of its best work. Lord Derbj 
spoke of the Association as ' essential in 
peace time, indispensable in war time/ and 
never was the Association more indis- 
pensable than during those terrible days 
of the German advance in 1918. Amid 



88 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

the ever-changing scenes of war it has been 
one of the forces working for reconstruction. 
We mourn the loss of huts and Red 
Triangle centres that have cost money, and 
on which labour has been lavished. Not 
much to look at many of these places, 
and yet to those who knew them they 
possessed an indescribable charm and 
fascination. It was only a little marquee, 
for instance, that formed the Headquarters 
of the Red Triangle at Henin in 191 7, only 
a couple of padres, one Church of England 
and one a Free Churchman there to 
represent the Y.M.C.A., but the whole 
story is a romance. Whilst we were 
sharing their lunch of bully beef and 
potatoes, bread, biscuits, and coffee, a 
' strafe ' began. The British artillery, half 
a mile away, were pouring lead into the 
Hun lines. Fritz soon replied, and things 
became lively. A shell burst near us, but 
our padres took no notice of it, and seemed 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 89 

to regard a little incident of that kind 
as a matter of course. Another shell 
burst on the cross-roads we had just 
traversed. It was here we had our first 
glimpse of the Hindenburg Line with 
Crucifix Corner in the foreground. Whilst 
we were still at lunch the Germans began 
to throw over some of their heavy stuff 
in the direction of Monchy, which was not 
far away. The British camp at Henin 
had been heavily bombarded a few days 
before our visit, and the troops quite pro- 
perly had to run like rabbits to their 
burrows. The last to take refuge in the 
dug-outs were our two padres, who with a 
keen and commendable sense of duty had 
waited to gather up the cash before taking 
refuge from the shells. One of the leaders 
gives the following graphic story of his 
experiences in the Retreat : — 

1 On the first day of the offensive we 
were wakened by terrific drum fire to the 



go IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

north, but on our own immediate stretch 
of front, the firing was not so severe. There 
was therefore no immediate need for 
evacuation. During that day the hut 
work went on as usual, but few men 
appeared, as everybody was " standing to." 
Liquid nourishment of the Y.M.C.A. type 
was rather at a discount. We finished 
serving at a somewhat late hour, and 
deemed it advisable to sleep in the dug-out, 
as a few shells had begun to sing overhead. 
Early the next morning we were awakened 
by the sound of many men on the move. 
More and still more French troops were 
arriving, and that day we had to speak 
more French than English. Towards even- 
ing uncomfortable reports began to arrive 
that the Germans had several places 
behind us, some in the immediate rear. 
"Les avions Boche," about which the 
Frenchmen were using " polite " phrases 
all day, were continually overhead, and 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 91 

having reported the movement of troops 
on the roads, shell-fire began to increase 
in intensity. Decidedly, it was " getting 

warm." Lieutenant-Colonel of the 

R.A.M.C. and the Medical Staff with whom 
I had had the privilege of messing for some 
time were very forcible in their advice to 
me to evacuate with the orderlies. They 
were living in a shell-proof dug-out, 
whereas we had no possible defence against 
a direct hit from any kind of shell. 

' Several batteries of artillery having 
been withdrawn from forward positions, 
and posted near us, were making sleep 
impossible and drawing the enemy's fire. 
It was quite impossible to obtain transport 
of any kind for my stores, so I gave what 
remained to the R.A.M.C. for walking 
wounded cases, of which I had supplied 
several during the day. 

' Then we made a " night-flitting/' the 
orderlies and myself, and slept a few miles 



92 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

to the S.W. But with every step away 
from the hut I became more and more 
uncomfortable. By daybreak I had de- 
cided to return and see how things were 
going. The orderlies decided to accompany 
me. 

1 On the way back we had to take cover 
once for a while, but finally reached the 
hut and carried on for the remainder of 
the day. 

1 We were called several kinds of lunatics 
for returning by the Medical Staff, who were 
then preparing to leave, and be it confessed 
we felt the truth of their remarks. It was 
quite out of the question to hold on any 
longer without cover save a " tin-hat " 
a-piece, so again we evacuated, this time 
finally/ 

It was only when the grey-clad Germans 
were actually in sight that the workers at 
St. Leger left their loved Y.M.C.A. I only 
visited St. Leger once, but that little 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 93 

shanty strangely fascinated me. It was 
not much to look at, just a group of ruined 
farm buildings, and in it * the swallows 
had found a house ' and regardless of our 
presence, yes, regardless of the shells, for 
St. Leger was bombarded every day even 
then, they flew backwards and forwards, 
feeding their young and twittering merrily 
and unconcernedly as if it had been a farm 
building in one of our English counties. 
It must have been with a heavy heart that 
those Y.M.C.A. men turned their backs on 
St. Leger and trudged to Boisleaux-au- 
Mont, where the five splendid huts that 
formed our equipment shortly afterwards 
shared the fate of St. Leger, and were all 
destroyed before the advance of the Huns. 
At Boyelles the tent was amid the ruins 
by the roadside, and the enamelled Triangle 
sign was attached to the bottom of the 
trunk of a tree that had been cut down by 
the enemy and was lying in the hedge just 



94 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

as it feU. Achiet-le-Petit Y.M.C.A. was 
in an orchard, the equipment consisting 
of a big marquee and several little shanties 
ingeniously constructed by the workers 
from empty petrol cans and biscuit boxes. 
High up in an elm tree was a sort of crow's 
nest, used by the Germans as an observa- 
tion post during the time of their occupa- 
tion. At Haplincourt the Y.M.C.A. was 
anything but imposing — an insignificant 
house fitted up as a club room, but in the 
paddock behind it the secretaries had 
erected a platform, and arranged an open- 
air auditorium on a grand scale. A 
hundred yards or so away was a large 
plunge bath, deep enough for a good high 
dive. It had been constructed by the 
Germans when they were in occupation, 
but when we saw it a score of our own 
Tommies were disporting themselves in 
the water and having a high old time. 
Albert was a scene of desolation, with its 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 95 

ruined church as the most conspicuous 
feature. High up on the top of the spire, 
dislodged by German shells, and jutting 
out at right angles to the spire, was the 
famous figure of the Virgin holding in her 
hands the infant Christ. For many months 
the figure had remained in this position, and 
was only finally brought down during the 
enemy's advance in 1918. The Y.M.C.A. 
in Albert was established in one big hut 
and two badly ruined houses. It was on 
the Saturday that St. Leger fell, and the 
Sunday at Albert was a memorable day. 
The town was crowded with an endless 
stream of men, horses, guns, and service 
wagons passing through. Little was sold 
in our canteens, but free refreshments were 
handed out by tired but willing workers 
all day long. Nearly all those workers 
had thrilling stories to tell of narrow 
escapes from death. Albert was evacuated 
on the Sunday night, and the place must 



96 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

have presented somewhat the appearance 
of a shambles. The Boche aeroplanes were 
dropping bombs or firing their machine- 
guns all the time, but still our men kept 
on serving the hot tea and cocoa, biscuits, 
and cigarettes that were so much appre- 
ciated by officers and men alike, only 
leaving their posts and abandoning their 
hut when ordered to do so by the Military. 
The retreat from Albert must have been 
like an awful nightmare. Some of our men 
in the darkness became entangled in the 
fallen wires, and whilst trying to extricate 
themselves heard the hum of an aeroplane 
just overhead, and a bomb was dropped 
only a few yards in front of them. 

At Bapaume we had several centres 
in and closely adjacent to the town. 
Bapaume, like Peronne, was not destroyed 
by enemy shell-fire, but deliberately 
wrecked by the Hun before he was forced 
to evacuate, and the foe we face to-day is 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 97 

a past master in the art of destruction. 
Hardly a building of any description 
remained intact in either of these towns 
when the British entered into occupation. 
That very fact made us marvel when, 
standing for the first time in front of the 
big building occupied by the Y.M.C.A. in 
Peronne we noticed that it was practically 
intact. On entering the building we 
marvelled still more, for the first object 
we saw was a fine German piano. Surely 
it was an act of kindness on the part of 
the wily Hun to leave it for our men. 
Was it ? When the British occupied 
Peronne a company of troops from the 
west of England were the first to enter that 
house. A Tommy who was musical made 
a bee-line for the piano, but his officer 
restrained him, bidding him first look 
inside. It was well he did so, for three 
powerful bombs were attached to the 
strings of the piano, and had he touched 



98 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

one of the keys concerned, he himself, the 
piano, and the building would have been 
utterly destroyed. In the hut attached 
to the house a boxing match was taking 
place on the evening of our arrival, and 
men had come from outposts miles away 
to take part. Underneath the house was 
a German dug-out of almost incredible 
depth. The original staircase was missing 
— the Germans having commandeered the 
wood for the construction of the dug-out 
— but it had been replaced by an ingenious 
Y.M.C.A. secretary, who had searched 
amid the ruins of Peronne until at last he 
had found another staircase, which, with 
infinite pains and labour and not a little 
ingenuity, he had built in to replace the 
original one. The day before our visit the 
old lady who had lived in the house before 
the war paid a visit to her old home. She 
was a refugee, and had trudged miles to 
get back to Peronne. She requested per- 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 99 

mission to dig in the garden and soon 
unearthed the uniform of her husband who 
fought against the Germans in 1870. She 
had buried it there before the fall of the 
town. Digging again she came across his 
sword and accoutrements, and deeper still, 
her silver spoons and other trinkets that 
she valued. Could anything bring home 
more clearly the horrors of war ? If, 
instead of Peronne in Northern France, it 
had been that sweet little town in England 
or Scotland, or that village in Wales or 
Ireland in which you live ! If you had 
heard the cry one evening, ' The Huns are 
coming/ and had just half an hour in 
which to rush round your home and gather 
together any things you specially treasured, 
and take them out into your garden and 
bury them, knowing that anything you 
left behind would be either looted and 
sent to Germany, or deliberately de- 
stroyed for sheer hate ! How easily this 



ioo IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

might have been, but for the mercy of 
God, the mistakes and miscalculations of 
the enemy, and the bravery and self- 
sacrifice of our heroes in blue and khaki, 
yes, and our workers in fustian and print 
— for England must never forget the debt 
she owes to her munition workers as well 
as to her sailors, soldiers, and airmen. 
They see nothing of the romance of war ; 
they know nothing of its excitement, and 
yet apart from their patriotic service the 
best efforts of our fighting men would have 
been in vain. 

Never was the Y.M.C.A. more appre- 
ciated than during the months that pre- 
ceded the great retreat in the spring of 
1918. New Red Triangle huts were spring- 
ing up like mushrooms, especially in the 
Fifth Army area, that part of the line that 
had recently been taken over from the 
French. Supported by the generous gifts 
of friends at home, ably directed by our 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 101 

divisional secretaries and those associated 
with them in the work, and supported and 
encouraged in every way by the Military 
Authorities, the progress made was remark- 
able. Then came the unexpected advance of 
the German hordes and the laborious work 
of months was destroyed in a few hours. 
At Noyon the secretary had to quit in a 
hurry, but returned to the hut later to 
bring away the money belonging to the 
Y.M.C.A. Thrice he returned, and the 
third time found it impossible to get away. 
After remaining in hiding for twenty-four 
hours he at length managed to escape with 
ten thousand francs in his pocket, saved 
for the Association which lost so heavily 
during those terrible days. At Amiens the 
Y.M.C.A. workers hung on for ten days 
after the official canteens had been removed 
because the town had become too hot for 
them. Day and night the * Joy ' hut close 
to the railway station was kept open, and 



102 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

thronged with officers and men, and the 
service rendered to the troops may be 
gauged from the amount of the takings, 
which ranged between fifteen and twenty 
thousand francs a day. 

Our total loss in the retreat was exceed- 
ingly heavy — more than one hundred and 
thirty huts and other centres in Picardy 
and Flanders, and in cash, upwards of 
one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. 
Serious as was that loss it might have been 
very much worse. Eight trucks of stores 
and equipment were stopped in the nick 
of time. The axle of one of our big 
lorries broke within a hundred yards of 
the most heavily shelled area in one of the 
towns bombarded by the enemy, but it 
was got away and, excepting in two cases, 
all the money and notes from tills and 
cash-boxes were removed safely before 
the huts were abandoned — striking testi- 
mony to the devotion of those in charge. 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 103 

' What I think impressed me most/ wrote 
the organising secretary for France, ' has 
been the undaunted spirit of our workers, 
who, when shelled out of huts, persisted 
in the attempt to return to them under 
very great personal danger/ ' Although we 
have lost everything that we had/ wrote 
one, ■ we still have hope within us, and 
are trusting to get back right into the 
thick of things in the very near future/ 
Yet another, writing in the spirit of 
Eastertide, said, ' We believe that our 
work will rise in new freshness and 
power out of its apparent extinction ! ' 
' There was a singular unanimity of effort 
on the part of the workers who were 
isolated one from the other, and had no 
opportunity of arranging a common policy. 
The sale of such articles as the soldiers 
needed continued in the huts up to the 
last moment possible, and then, when the 
danger of the hut and stores falling into 



104 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

the hands of the enemy became imminent, 
biscuits and cigarettes were handed out as 
largely as possible to men in the neigh- 
bourhood taking part in the fighting. 
One would have thought that having done 
this the workers would have considered 
their own personal safety and retired, 
but in several cases I found them running 
stunts for walking wounded in the open, 
outside the hut or in its immediate 
neighbourhood, in close touch with the 
medical authorities. 

' The confusion of the retreat opened up 
to our workers opportunities of service 
which they gladly utilised. Last night 
was a night of uncertainty. We could 
not go to bed owing to the uncertainty 
of the military position where our head- 
quarters were, and so stood on a high hill 
beside an old Trappist monastery, watching 
the village at the foot in flames, and trying 
to ascertain the progress of the fighting 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 105 

through the darkness. Our workers even 
under these circumstances seized an oppor- 
tunity of doing a very fine bit of service. 
A stream of poor refugees were passing, 
people of all conditions and ages, fleeing 
for safety and shelter, and so at 11.30 at 
night at the cross-roads, a table was set 
up with a hot urn of cocoa and supplies of 
biscuits, which were handed out to French 
and Flemish people as they passed. . . . 

1 1 have never seen anything that has 
touched me more than these streams of 
all sorts and conditions of people straggling 
along with their little belongings, infants 
in arms, to old people who had not walked 
a mile for years. It was a great oppor- 
tunity for rendering a truly Christian 
service. The other day we lent one of 
our large lorries for a whole day for the 
purpose of carrying these people in some 
degree of comfort to a place of safety/ 

Thus by every device that resourceful- 



io6 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 

ness and experience could suggest the 
workers of the Y.M.C.A. in France minis- 
tered to the comfort of the men who were 
so bravely sustaining that terrible on- 
slaught. The organisation of the Red 
Triangle is the embodied goodwill of the 
British people towards its beloved army. 
An emergency like the one in the spring of 
1918 was just the time when the services 
of the Red Triangle were most sorely 
needed by our soldiers. 

Fortunately, all the Y.M.C.A. workers 
got away safely. Sixty from the Fifth 
Army took refuge at Amiens, whilst more 
than eighty from the area of the Third 
Army found sanctuary at Doullens. 

A few months later, thanks to the 
arrival of the Americans in France, and 
the brilliant strategy of Foch and Haig ; 
thanks above all to the mercy of God, the 
tide turned, and the Huns were once more 
in full retreat. A distinguished war cor- 



IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 107 

respondent wrote his impressions of 
Bapaume a day or two after it had again 
been captured by the British. Said he, 
c I prowled about the streets of Bapaume 
through gaping walls of houses, over 
piled wreckage, and found it the same old 
Bapaume as when I had left it, except that 
some of our huts and an officers' club, and 
some Y.M.C.A. tents and shelters have 
been blown to bits like everything else/ 
A ruined town without a Y.M.C.A. ! 
Could anything be more desolate ? 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 

The problem of dealing with conditions, at such a 
time, and under existing circumstances, at the rest 
camps has always been a most difficult one ; but 
the erection of huts by the Young Men's Christian 
Association has made this far easier. 

The extra comfort thereby afforded to the men, 
and the opportunities for reading and writing, have 
been of incalculable service, and I wish to tender 
to your Association, and all those who have as- 
sisted, my most grateful thanks. — Field-Marshal 
Viscount French. 

It was on the afternoon of July 30, 1917, 
that we reached Bailleul in Flanders. 
Proceeding directly to the Headquarters 
of the Y.M.C.A. we had tea, and then set 
out to visit the huts in the vicinity. It 
was a novel experience, for every hut was 
empty. The reason was not far to find. 
The troops were in their camps formed up 
in marching order, and later in the evening 

108 



THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 109 

we watched them march out to take part 
in the great offensive. We were told that 
the barrage was timed for 3.50 in the 
morning, and were asked to have our work 
for the walking wounded ready at 5 a.m., 
so we determined to spend the night on the 
top of Kemmel Hill, the highest hill in 
Flanders. It was just after midnight when 
we reached the summit of the hill ; and 
we wondered if the barrage had not already 
commenced, so heavy was the firing. 
From our point of vantage we could 
see the whole of the sector, from Armen- 
tieres in the south, across the battlefields 
of Messines and Wytschaete and away 
beyond Ypres in the north. Silently, close 
to us, an observation balloon stole up in 
the darkness, and a few minutes later 
as silently descended. Involuntarily we 
ducked as a monster shell shrieked over- 
head, and some one cried, ' There goes the 
Bailleul Express ! ' About 3 a.m. things 



no THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 

began to quiet down. Our guns might 
have been knocked out ; they were hardly 
replying at all to the enemy's fire. Later 
on we saw a series of signal flashes high up 
across the battlefield, and then at 3.50 
promptly to the moment, the barrage 
began, and there was no possibility of 
mistaking it — two thousand guns, as we 
learned afterwards, all firing at the same 
time. As one looked at that hell of flame 
and bursting shell, one felt it was impos- 
sible for any life to continue to exist 
beneath it, and one thought of the boys, 
as steady as if they had been on parade, 
creeping up behind that barrage of fire. 
We had seen them as they left their camp 
the night before, and we saw them when 
they returned — some of them — during the 
two days following the barrage ; not in 
regiments a thousand strong, with colours 
flying and bands playing, but dribbling 
back one or two at a time — the walking 



THE BARRAGE AND AFTER in 

wounded — and each one came in to our 
little Y.M.C.A. tents attached to the clear- 
ing stations — one was at an island in a 
sea of mud, near Dickebusch huts in 
Flanders. There was a queue inside of 
two or three hundred men. Every man 
in that queue was wounded, and waiting 
to have his wounds attended to ; every 
man was hungry until he entered that 
tent ; every man plastered from head to 
foot with the most appalling mud, and 
unless one has seen the mud of Flanders or 
of the Somme, it is impossible to imagine 
what it is really like. As I mingled with 
the men in that queue and assisted our 
workers to hand out hot tea, coffee, and 
cocoa, biscuits, bread and butter, chocolate, 
cigarettes or oranges, I thanked God for 
the opportunity He had given to the 
Y.M.C.A., and the thing that impressed 
me more than anything else was the fact 
that one did not hear a single complaint , 



ii2 THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 

not one word of grousing. And why not ? 
Was it because they liked that kind of 
thing ? Don't make any mistake about 
it — no one could possibly like it, but out 
there the men know they are fighting not 
for truth and freedom in the abstract, but 
for their own liberty, and, what is infinitely 
more important to them, for their homes 
and loved ones. They know that what 
the Hun has done for Northern France 
and Flanders is as nothing compared with 
what he would do for the places and the 
people we love if he once got the oppor- 
tunity of wreaking his vengeance on us. 
There is no finer bit of work that the 
Y.M.C.A. is doing to-day than this work 
for the walking wounded, which before any 
great push takes place, is carefully organised 
down to the last detail. Before one of the 
great battles, our men took up their 
positions at thirty-four different centres 
where they were able to minister to the 



^ 



ffi ON 




> 



5 a 

H Z 

a > 



***# 



I 7 







THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 113 

needs of the wounded, and thus to co- 
operate with the magnificent work that is 
being done under the sign of the Red Cross. 
As in France, so in Italy and in the East, 
at Beersheba and other centres on the lines 
of communication in Palestine, records show 
how efficiently the same type of service is 
being rendered to our brave troops. 

To return to the barrage. It is always 
interesting to note the effect a scene of 
that kind has on people of different 
temperaments. We had been sitting round 
a huge shell-hole near the top of Kemmel 
Hill feeling, it must be confessed, a trifle 
' fed-up ' with things. We were all tired, 
and had had a very heavy day's work. 
It was an uncomfortable night, to say the 
least of it, with drizzling rain, and very 
cold for the time of year. At the first 
sound of the drum-fire of the barrage 
set up by the British guns, we sprang to our 
feet, wild with excitement. A distinguished 

H 



ii4 THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 

padre from the Midlands was lost in ad- 
miration for the work of the munitioners 
whose labours made possible this great 
strafing of the Hun. The leader of the 
party, a colonial from far-off Australia, 
simply danced with excitement which he 
made no attempt to suppress, contenting 
himself with ejaculating from time to 
time expressions to the effect that that 
was the most dramatic moment of his life. 
An unemotional Professor from one of our 
great universities stood with clenched 
fists, and was overheard to say, ' Give 'em 
hell, boys ! ' Another padre in the 
company began to quote Browning, the 
quotation referring to the signal flashes 
to which reference has already been made : 

' From sky to sky. Sudden there went, 
Like horror and astonishment, 
A fierce vindictive scribble of red, 
Which came across, as if one said, 
. . . "There — 

"Bur-nit!"' 



THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 115 

How often it happens that in the 
greatest moments of one's life, it is the 
trivial thing that appeals most strongly to 
one's imagination. So in this case. The 
thing never to be forgotten was connected 
with the early dawn. I can see even now 
that long grey streak on the horizon across 
the battlefield, as the daylight came. A 
thrush from a bush close to where we were 
standing began to pour out its song of praise 
and thanksgiving, heedless of falling shells 
and the roar of guns. There was something 
unspeakably pathetic in that song on the 
battlefield, yes, and prophetic of the great 
day that is coming in spite of all reverses ; the 
day of victory and peace, peace purchased 
at the price of struggle, and of blood. 

As one watched the barrage from 
Kemmel the onslaught seemed to be 
irresistible. It seemed impossible for the 
German hordes to hold our men back. 
Neither could they have held them, but 



n6 THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 

what the Hun could not do, the rain did 
for him. It just teemed down, and in a 
few hours Flanders was churned up into 
a swamp of mud. It was impossible to 
bring the big guns up and the whole 
advance was stayed. One thought how 
often the same thing had happened before, 
and wondered, only wondered, if we at 
home were supporting the boys at the 
Front as they had a right to expect us to 
support them ? It is so easy at a time 
like this to put one's trust merely in 
' reeking tube and iron shard/ and to 
leave God out of our calculations. After 
all in this great f struggle we are not fighting 
merely against ' flesh and blood/ but 
against c principalities and powers, against 
spiritual wickedness in high places/ and 
even to-day ' More things are wrought 
by prayer than this world dreams of/ 
It was that great soldier, Sir William 
Robertson, who said, ' Let us never forget 



THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 117 

in all that we do that the measure of our 
ultimate success will be governed largely, 
if not mainly, by the extent to which we 
put our religious convictions into our 
actions, and hold fast, firmly and fearlessly, 
to the faith of our forefathers/ Had the 
Germans beaten us two years ago every 
one would have known the reason why 
— they had more men, bigger guns, and 
more of them, more aeroplanes, and an 
infinitely better supply of munitions of 
war, but by the summer of 1917 we were 
superior to them in every particular, and yet 
victory tarried. Why ? Can it be that God 
was waiting for His people to seek His aid ? 
With Russia out of the war, we were 
once again to stand with our backs to the 
wall — the position in which the British 
are always seen at their best — and the 
National crisis came as one more challenge 
to the Nation to turn to the God of our 
fathers. 



CHAPTER IX 

<LES PARENTS BLESSfiES' 

The Y.M.C.A. ? Why, they could no more do 
without the Y.M.C.A. than they could do without 
munitions at the Front ? I have seen it in opera- 
tion. — The Right Hon. Will Crooks, M.P. 

'A Great Mother Hen/ so wrote one who 
for the first time saw the work of the 
Y.M.C.A. for the relatives of dangerously 
wounded men. This work is carried on in 
London and a number of provincial 
centres, but it is seen at its best in France, 
for there it is on a much larger scale. 
If a man is dangerously wounded and 
lying in one of the hospitals on the other 
side of the Channel, a message is sent to his 
people at home containing the requisite 
permission to visit him, and telling them, 
moreover, that from the moment they 

118 



' LES PARENTS BLESSEES ' 119 

reach France the Y.M.C.A. will take care 
of them. Red Triangle motors meet every 
boat as it reaches a French port ; auto- 
matically the relatives of wounded, or 
' Les Parents Blessees ' as the French call 
them, are handed over to our care, and 
we motor them to their destination — 
assisted sometimes by the Red Cross. As 
this may mean a run of eighty or a hundred 
miles, and in war time may mean a whole 
day, or possibly two days on the French 
railways, the motor run is in itself a great 
boon. During the whole of the time they 
are in France, the relatives are entertained 
as the guests of the Red Triangle in the 
special hostels that have been established 
for the purpose in the principal bases. 
Many of them have never been away from 
their own homes before ; they know no 
language but their own, and a journey 
of the kind would have its terrors at any 
time, but to all the ordinary difficulties 



120 4 LES PARENTS BLESSEES : 

has now to be added the fact that they 
are consumed with anxiety on account 
of those who are dearer than life itself. 
It means everything to them that the 
Y.M.C.A. as a ' Great Mother Hen ' takes 
them under its protection, soothes and 
protects them, so that in the darkest 
moments of their lives they are not dealt 
with by any officials who have to get 
through so many cases in a given time, 
but by sympathetic friends, actuated only 
by the love of God, and of country. One 
of the most beautiful of these hostels is 
' Les Iris/ It is hidden away in the 
depths of a wood near the sea, and in the 
springtime the nights are full of the melody 
of the nightingales. This hostel is reserved 
largely for the use of the relatives of 
dangerously wounded officers. The lady 
who presides over another of the hostels 
has been called the Florence Nightingale 
of Jthe Red Triangle, and indeed that 



1 LES PARENTS BLESSEES ' 121 

would be a suitable name for any of these 
ladies who take the relatives to their 
hearts, and do everything possible to 
comfort and cheer them and make them 
feel at home. As we write, a letter from 
one of our guests lies before us. We quote 
from it because it is typical of thousands 
of letters received from grateful friends : — 
1 Many thanks for the photo of my 
son's grave received this morning. 
How very kind you Y.M.C.A. people 
are. I little thought last November 
when I was begging (Hut Week in 
Brighton) that I should reap personal 
benefit from the Y.M.C.A. The kind- 
ness and hospitality extended to my 
husband and I when we came to France 
nearly three months ago, we shall never 
forget. It is not in our power to help 
with money except in a small way, 
but we tell all we can, and help in every 
way in our power/ 



122 ' LES PARENTS BLESSEES ' 

During a recent visit to France we had 
the privilege of being shown over one of 
the British hospitals, which, like all our 
hospitals, was wonderfully efficient. Every- 
thing that could be done to alleviate 
suffering was done. In one ward every 
man was seriously wounded, and side by 
side were two beds, one occupied by a 
young Canadian and the other by a young 
Britisher. The latter had his mother with 
him, who was one of our guests. The 
Canadian watched them together for some 
time in silence, but followed them with 
his eyes as a cat might a mouse. Suddenly, 
without any warning, he flung himself 
over on to his side and burst out crying. 
Questioned as to what was the matter, he 
replied, ' Nothing/ ' Then what makes 
you cry ? Is the pain worse ? ' ' No, 
thanks, the pain is better/ ' Then what 
makes you cry like that ? ' Drying his 
eyes, the boy replied, ' It 's all very well 



' LES PARENTS BLESSEES ' 123 

for him, he 's got his mother with him. 
My mother is more than six thousand 
miles away ! ' Is it not worth any effort 
and any cost to help the loved ones of 
these men who have made such great 
sacrifices for us ? The whole of this work 
for ' Les Parents Blessees ' is full of pathos. 
On one occasion we reached a big hospital 
centre just as another Association car 
arrived from a big base port, bringing 
three English women to see their husbands. 
The Y.M.C.A. leader took them to the 
wards they were seeking. At the first, 
the sister in charge came to speak to one 
of our guests and said, ' I am very sorry, 
but am afraid your husband won't know 
you. He has been terribly ill, and all sorts 
of complications have set in, but you had 
better come in and see him/ Twenty 
minutes later we saw her again, and she 
told us that for ten minutes she sat by 
her husband's bedside, but he did not 



124 ' LES PARENTS BLESSEES ' 

know her. Then stooping over him, she 
whispered, • You remember little Lizzie 
and little Willie at home, don't you ? ' 
For one second he gave her that look of 
love and recognition that made the long 
journey from home worth while. 

Passing on to another ward we sent in a 
message, and the sister came to greet our 
guest, and said, ' I am glad to say your 
husband is much better. 1 11 tell him you 
are here/ When she same back she said 
she had asked the invalid, ' What would 
you like best in all the world ? ' Without 
a moment's hesitation, he replied, ' To 
go back to Blighty, Sister/ ' Blighty ' — 
how many of those who use it realise the 
meaning of the word ? It comes from the 
Indian ' Vilayhti ' and means ' The home 
across the sea/ ' Blighty ! ' said the Sister ; 
• you know that 's impossible. What 
would you like next best ? ' 'To see my 
wife/ was the prompt reply. ' And what 



' LES PARENTS BLESSEES ' 125 

would you say if I told you your wife was 
waiting outside to see you ? ' queried the 
Sister, as she moved from his bedside and 
opened the door. Yes, to these people 
many thousands of them, the Red Triangle 
has indeed been as a Great Mother Hen at 
a time when they most needed its care. 
We are all very much like big children, 
and to all of us there are times when we 
need some one to take us by the hand and 
speak words of consolation and good 
cheer. 



CHAPTER X 

CELLARS AND DUG-OUTS ON THE 
WESTERN FRONT 

My son, who is somewhere in France, tells me what 
a great comfort your Y.M.C.A. has been to him 

from the time he started his training at and 

all through his stopping-places almost up to the 
trenches. 

Unless one has seen for oneself the ravages 
of war, it is impossible to conceive the 
horror and desolation of a place like Ypres. 
Before the war it was one of the most 
beautiful cities in Europe, to-day it is 
nothing more than a heap of ruins. It 
is enough to make even the most un- 
emotional of men cry, to stand in that 
once beautiful Cloth Hall Square and see 
how complete is the destruction — not one 
house, not a single room left intact — every- 
thing destroyed beyond recognition. And 

126 



THE WESTERN FRONT 127 

what of the Y.M.C.A. in Ypres ? There 
we found the Red Triangle standing erect 
amid the ruins, and following the hand 
that pointed down we came to a little 
cellar Y.M.C.A. — only a cellar and yet it 
had been a source of helpfulness and 
inspiration to tens of thousands of our 
brave men. It was wonderfully fitted up, 
contained a small circulating library, piano, 
and everything needed for the canteen 
side of things. Not only that, it was a 
centre to work from. Between the cellar 
and the enemy were nine dug-outs at 
advanced stations. As these were all 
evacuated by order of the Military during 
the German offensive in April 191 8, there 
can be no objection to their location being 
indicated. The first consisted of a ruined 
house and a Nissen hut at the Asylum ; 
the second was at ' Salvation Corner/ and 
the third at Dead End, on the Canal bank. 
There was a Y.M.C.A. at Wells Cross 



128 CELLARS AND DUG-OUTS ON 

Roads, another at St. Jean and Wiel, and 
a sixth at Potyze Chateau. The seventh 
had a homely ring about it, for it was 
situated at ' Oxford Circus/ the eighth 
was at St. Julien, the ninth at Lille Gate 
(Ypres), and the tenth was the cellar 
Y.M.C.A. at the corner of Lille Road 
referred to above. For many months it 
was the centre of the social life of the 
stricken town, but in August 1917 it 
received a direct hit from an enemy shell, 
and was knocked in. This dug-out work 
is intensely interesting, though naturally 
it has its limitations. Large meetings are, 
of course, impossible ; sometimes even the 
singing of a hymn would be sufficient to 
attract the attention of Fritz, but the man 
who is resourceful and courageous, and who 
can see an opportunity for Christian 
service in meeting the common everyday 
needs of men, will find endless opportunities 
of putting in a word for the Master — and 




t. • 




A CANADIAN Y.M.C.A. DUG-OUT NEAR VIMY RIDGE 



THE WESTERN FRONT 129 

the sordid dug-out under shell-fire, can 
easily be transformed into a temple to 
His praise, an inquiry-room where resolu- 
tions are made that change the lives of 
men, and help the soldier to realise that he 
is called to be a crusader. 

In the Red Triangle dug-outs of the 
Ypres salient, from three to four thou- 
sand bloaters were supplied to the troops 
week by week ; 1500 kilos of apples, and 
more than 100,000 eggs ! It was a miracle 
how these latter were collected in the 
villages behind the line. Corps provided 
a lorry and two drivers for five months to 
bring them into Ypres, and also assisted 
us with thirty orderlies. It was that 
timely help that made our work possible. 
It would be difficult to overestimate the 
boon to the troops of this variety to their 
diet. Iron rations will keep body and 
soul together, but it is the little extra 
that helps so much in keeping up the 

1 



130 CELLARS AND DUG-OUTS ON 

health and spirits of the men. They would 
follow the egg lorry for a mile and gladly 
pay the threepence each that the eggs cost. 
In February 1918, the turnover from the 
Red Triangle centres round Ypres amounted 
to 245,000 francs, whilst in March it had 
risen to 260,000. For many weeks in this 
salient we gave away from five to six thou- 
sand gallons of hot drinks each week. All 
honour to the band of Y.M.C.A. leaders 
who kept the Red Triangle flag flying under 
these difficult conditions. For six weeks 
one of our leaders was unable to leave his 
cellar home, owing to the incessant shelling 
and bombing of the immediate vicinity. 
These were men who 'counted not their own 
lives dear unto them/ but were ready to 
take any risk and to put up with any per- 
sonal inconvenience that they might serve 
the country they loved — yes, and they too 
endured 'as seeing Him Who is invisible/ 
The King, who is the patron of the 



THE WESTERN FRONT 131 

Y.M.C. A., and very keenly interested in the 
work, visited our tiny centre at Messines. 
The dug-out at Wytschaete was knocked 
out, and the Red Triangle cellar at Meroc, 
just behind Loos, destroyed by a direct 
hit. The latter was approached by a long 
communication trench, and was fitted up 
in the ordinary way — a few tables and 
chairs, reading and writing materials, games, 
pictures on the walls, and, of course, the 
inevitable and always appreciated piano. 
A few days before we were there a dud 
shell from one of the German ' heavies ' 
fell only two or three yards in front of the 
divisional secretary's car. The cellar was 
immediately under a ruined brasserie, and 
in the grounds of the latter was a solitary 
German grave. The story goes that in 
the early days of the war enemy patrols 
passed through Meroc, and a shot alleged 
to have been fired from a window of the 
brasserie found its billet in one of the 



132 CELLARS AND DUG-OUTS 

Huns. In revenge, the Germans killed 
every man, woman, and child in the 
brasserie. In striking contrast was the 
story told us by the matron of one of our 
British hospitals : ' Every one in this ward 
is desperately wounded, and too ill to 
travel. All in that row/ said she, pointing, 
' are Germans. Yesterday a man occupy- 
ing one of those beds lay dying, and could 
not make his head comfortable. I went 
into the next ward, and said to the Tommies 
" There's a German dying, will one of you 
lend him your pillow ? " Without a 
moment's hesitation/ said she, ' every one 
of those dangerously wounded Britishers 
whipped out his pillow to help his dying 
enemy/ That is the spirit of our men, 
and that accounts, quite as much as their 
valour, for the fact that they have won the 
respect even of an enemy trained from 
infancy to regard the British soldier as an 
object of scorn and derision. 



CHAPTER XI 
CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 

The work of this Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion has sunk so deep into the minds and into the 
lives of our fellow countrymen that its work in the 
future can never be diminished, and must be ex- 
tended. And it is going to do more to my mind, 
than simply minister to the wants of the men in 
camp ; it is going to be a bond between this country 
and the Great Englands beyond the sea. — The Rt. 
Hon. the Earl of Derby, K.G., G.C.V.O. 

A striking feature of the war work of the 
Y.M.C.A. has been the promptness with 
which a new situation has been seized and 
a new opening entered. There has been 
an utter absence of red tape, and freedom 
of action has been given to all accredited 
representatives of the Association. The 
Red Triangle has always been first in the 
field, and has been likened to a tank in its 
knack of overcoming apparently insuper- 

133 



134 CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 

able obstacles. The day after the British 
troops first entered Bapaume a Y.M.C.A. 
man appeared leading a packhorse loaded 
up with cigarettes, biscuits, and dolly 
cakes, which he distributed amongst the 
troops. He had got a foothold for the 
Association, and that foothold was retained 
until Bapaume was evacuated. 
* * * 

In the British offensive in the early days 
of August 1 91 8 a noted war correspondent 
at the Front wrote : — 

' In one part of the line three hours 
after the troops reached their final 
objective they were eating a hot break- 
fast as part of the programme of the day. 
The familiar, ever-welcome sign of the 
" Y.M.C.A." blossomed on a roofless 
French cafe six miles within the 
crumpled German line, before the 
tanks had finished chasing the nth 
Corps staff out of Framerville and down 



CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 135 

the Peronne road. Food, and even books 
and papers, were set out under the Red 
Triangle for tired and hungry fighting 
men as they trooped into the rickety 
building to eat and be refreshed in a 
room carpeted with German papers/ 

* * * 

What thrilling memories the name of 
Arras will always conjure up in the minds 
of Y.M.C.A. workers who served in that 
city of ruins ! One wrote home the day 
after a strong attack by the British on 
the enemy lines. He wrote the letter from 
a dug-out which only the day before was 
occupied by the Huns, in which he was 
carrying on for the Y.M.C.A. So precipitate 
was their flight that he partook of the repast 
served up by German cooks for German 
officers. At one time the rival trenches 
were, in places, less than ten yards apart I 
It was here that Sir Douglas Haig person- 
ally complimented the Association on the 



136 CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 

work its representatives were doing on the 
field of battle. 

The most memorable motor run we ever 
had was from Souastre to Arras in 1916. 
The hut was closed when we reached 
Souastre in the morning, the leader having 
received a letter from the Town Major 
politely requesting him to close it from 
7.30 a.m. as it was expected that the Huns 
would strafe the village at 8 a.m., and again 
at 4.30, and so it happened. This seemed 
strange, as the village had not been strafed 
of late. How could the British have known 
when Fritz would fire again ? It seemed un- 
canny, until a strange unwritten reciprocal 
working arrangement between friend and 
foe was explained, which means in effect 
that Fritz refrains from bombing or bom- 
barding c A ' three or four miles behind 

the British lines if Tommy leaves village 

1 B ' behind his lines alone, and vice 

versa. As both villages are used as 



CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 137 

billets for the rival armies, both have been 
glad at times to honour this understanding. 
The run from Souastre to the railhead at 
Saulty was uneventful. Night was closing 
in as we left for Arras and there was no 
moon. For twenty kilos or more we had 
to travel with lights extinguished. We 
were less than a mile from the enemy 
trenches, which ran parallel to the road 
we were traversing. ' Verey ' lights or 
star-shells sent up by the enemy continually 
made everything as light as day for the 
few seconds they were in the air. There 
were mysterious noises from the gun 
emplacements that run along the roadside, 
and mysterious shapes loomed up ahead 
of us from time to time as we overhauled 
and passed transport wagons and the like. 
At last we reached our destination, and 
it was the writer's first visit to a town of 
considerable size that had been wrecked 
by bombardment. There were barricades 



138 CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 

in the streets, shell-holes and ruins every- 
where. We motored through the famous 
Grande Place and passed through street 
after street in that city of the dead, until, 
turning a corner, we entered a narrow street 
near the ruined cathedral, and hearing a 
piano playing rag-time, it was obvious 
that we were near the Y.M.C.A. The 
memory of that old chateau in the narrow 
street will always remain with us as we 
saw it then — the entrance hall, where free 
hot drinks were being dispensed; the 
canteen crammed with British soldiers, 
including many i Bantams/ who were then 
stationed at Arras ; the little concert-room, 
with possibly a hundred men gathered 
round a piano singing choruses and snatches 
of songs or listening to the rag-time, 
accompanying it at times by whistling the 
refrain or stamping on the floor. Another 
crowd upstairs had been entertained to a 
lantern lecture, and the day's programme 



CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 139 

was being concluded with family prayers. 
As we lay awake that night we heard many 
familiar noises that sounded strange there 
— a cat call, the cry of a baby, whilst ever 
and anon a shell would go shrieking over 
the town. In the morning we visited the 
ruined cathedral, which was a sight to 
make men or angels weep, but even there 
one saw erect amid the ruins, at the 
highest point, the Cross, the emblem of our 
Christian faith, and one knew that though 
it might be by way of the Cross, yet truth 
and freedom would triumph in the end. 
* * * 

A well-known war correspondent writing 
from British Headquarters in France to 
the Daily Mail, on August 13, 1918, told 
the story of a village under shell-fire and 
still within reach of machine-gun bullets, 
in which was a German notice-board 
pointing to an incinerator, and wrote : — 
1 1 hear from an officer who visited the 



140 CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 

spot again a day later that another notice, 
"This way to the Y.M.C.A." was added. 
A dashing cavalry officer, very much of 
the old school, possessing a voice that 
would carry two miles, begged me with 
great earnestness to do him one service, 
" Would I mention the Y.M.C.A. ? It had 
provided his men with hot coffee before 
riding out." ' That is the kind of service 
the Red Triangle has the privilege of 
rendering to our fighting men in the course 
of practically every battle. 

* * * 

The Bois Carre in 1916 was a very 
unhealthy spot. At the edge of a wood in 
a tiny natural amphitheatre the Y.M.C.A. 
had one of its outposts. An orderly was 
usually in charge, and day and night he 
kept up a good supply of hot drinks for 
free distribution to the troops. There 
they could buy biscuits, cigarettes, soap, 
and other necessaries, or receive free of 



CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 141 

charge the ever-welcome writing-paper 
and materials. The supervising secretary 
visiting the dug-out one day in the course 
of his rounds found it had been blown in 
by a big shell. The orderly was terribly 
wounded, part of his side having been 
blown away, but smiling amid his agony, 
he said, ' The money 's safe here, sir ! ' 
Careless of himself, the brave fellow's first 
consideration was to safeguard the money 
in the Y.M.C.A. till. 

We have vivid recollections of our visit 
to the Bois Carre in 1916. Late in the 
evening we reached Dickebusch. The 
Y.M.C.A. was there in the main street of 
the little Belgian village, and immediately 
behind it was the ruined church. It was 
only a small strafed building in a ruined 
street when the Red Triangle first made 
its appearance in Dickebusch, but the 
secretary held that to be the most con- 
venient type of Y.M.C.A. building, ' for/ 



142 CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 

said he, ' if it becomes too small, all you 
have to do is to knock a hole through the 
wall on either side, and take in additional 
houses/ This was exactly what we had 
done and, unattractive as it was, the place 
drew crowds of men. At the Dickebusch 
Y.M.C.A. we were provided with shrapnel 
and gas helmets and instructed in the use 
of the latter. A two-mile trudge across 

a duck- walk over ' b y meadow ' 

brought us to the famous Ridgewood Dug- 
outs. It was here that the Canadians lost 
their guns in the early days of the war, 
and afterwards so gloriously regained 
them. We entered the wood at midnight. 
A huge rat crossed our path, and as we 
entered the first of the Y.M.C.A. dug-outs 
where free cocoa was being dispensed in 
empty jam tins, we remembered a yarn 
told us the day before by one of our 
workers. He had come to Ridgewood as 
a special speaker, and after the evening 



CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 143 

meeting lay down on the floor of the dug- 
out to sleep, but as he was beginning to 
feel drowsy, a huge rat ran over his legs, 
and later one passed across his face. With 
an electric flash-lamp he scared them 
away, but soon getting used to it they came 
on ' in close formation/ He lit a candle, 
and a few minutes later the rat ran away 
with the candle — so he said ! From the 
Ridgewood we went on to the Bois Carre. 
Shells were screaming overhead all the 
time, but it was not a long walk though it 
provided many thrills. For a couple of 
hundred yards we were on open ground, 
and within easy reach of the Hun snipers. 
Only two of us were allowed to pass at a 
time, and my guide and I had to keep 
fifty yards apart, and when a ' Verey ' 
light went up, had to stand absolutely 
still until it fell to earth, and its light was 
extinguished. Weird things those star 
shells ! They shoot up to a good height 



144 CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 

like rockets, burst into brilliant light, 
poise in mid-air and gradually shimmer 
down and out. A few minutes brought us 
to the shelter of a ruined brasserie, and 
from its further side we entered the 
communication trenches, and thus passed 
to the Bois Carre. Standing back to 
visualise the scene, the orderly caught my 
arm and pulled me into the shelter of the 
dug-out — a second later came the patter 
of machine bullets on the sand-bags where 
we had stood not ten seconds before. 
There was something fascinating about 
that little dug-out Y.M.C.A., with its 
caterer's boiler, urns and stores, and it is 
sad to think that since then it has been 
destroyed by shell-fire, even though other 
dug-outs have been opened to take its 
place. 

A year later we revisited that old 
brasserie. There was little of it left. 
The central hall remained, and the Red 




A GREAT BOON TO BRITISH TOMMY — A Y.M.C.A. 
WELL UNDER SHELL-FIRE 




THE CAMBRIDGE DUG-OUT 



CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 145 

Triangle was on it, marking it out as a centre 
for walking wounded. A dressing station 
had been rigged up in the cellar under- 
neath. A distinguished preacher serving 
with the Y.M.C.A. conducted a memorable 
Watch-night service in the Ridgewood. 
Two or three hundred men gathered round 
and listened with marked attention. A 
shell burst quite close during the prayer, 
and every man instinctively glanced up 
to see the effect on the padre. He carried 
on exactly as if nothing had happened, and 
won his way to every heart. 



K 



CHAPTER XII 

STORIES OF <LE TRIANGLE ROUGE' 

It is with very great pleasure I send a small 
contribution (3s.) to the Y.M.C.A. funds, and only 
wish it could match my inclination. Few things 
have brought so much comfort to the parents at 
home as the knowledge of the splendid work done 
by your organisation. As one boy puts it, ' When 
we get inside the Y.M.C.A. hut, we feel as if we are 
home again.' 

At the close of a Y.M.C.A. Conference held 
in the Hotel McMahon in Paris, a French 
lady came timidly forward with a lovely 
bouquet of red roses, and in a pretty little 
speech presented them as a thankoffering 
for the war work of the Y.M.C.A. It was 
the gift of a mother who had four sons 
serving with the Army. Those flowers 
have long since faded, but the kind thought 
that prompted them will always remain a 
gracious memory. 

146 



4 LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 147 

A soldier home on leave brought an in- 
teresting souvenir of the first ' Threap wood ' 
hut, which did such good work in the 
Ploegsteert Woods, but was ultimately 
destroyed by shell-fire — a 2 franc and a 
50 centimes piece which had become 
welded together in the heat of the con- 
flagration. Another Tommy saw a fierce 
fight take place between British and 
Germans, actually inside the hut at Neuve 
Eglise. The incident that seemed to have 
appealed most strongly to his imagination 
was the fact that the pictures were still 
hanging on the walls. It is interesting to 
notice the curious freaks of dud shells. 
Outside the hut at Tilloy we saw one which 
had pierced its way through the trunk of a 
tree without exploding — the nose of the 
shell protruded at the other side of the 
trunk, the shell itself remaining firmly 
embedded in the tree. 



l 4 8 ' LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 

An Australian officer one day sauntered 
into the ' Crystal Palace/ an important 
Y.M.C.A. centre in Havre. He was inter- 
ested, and well he might be. It is a huge 
building, and swarms of men assemble there 
in the evenings. The Australian's interest 
took a practical form. Before leaving he 
handed two one-pound notes to the leader, 
expressing regret that he could not make 
it more, and adding, ' I think you Y.M.C.A. 
people will make a religious man of me 
before the war is over/ ' What do you 
mean ? ' said the secretary. ' Well/ said 
he, ' I have never had any use for religion, 

but at the battle of I felt down and 

out. I didn't care much if the Boche killed 
me. I had had nothing to eat for days — 
when suddenly a Y.M.C.A. man appeared, 
heaven knows where he came from, but 
he was there right enough, and he handed 
me a good hot drink, a packet of biscuits, 
and some cigarettes. Yes/ said he, ' I 



4 LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 149 

believe you Y.M.C.A. men will make a 
religious man of me before you have 
finished/ 

S|C Sjt SJC 

In war-time people often forget their 
differences, and in Paris one of our splendid 
British soldiers, who was a Roman Catholic, 
lay badly wounded and terribly ill. He 
wanted to confess, but there was no English 
priest near. Ultimately a French priest 
confessed and absolved him through an 
American Y.M.C.A. lady — a Protestant — 
who acted as interpreter. 

* * * 

In the early days of the war a valued 
worker on Salisbury Plain was the grandson 
of a famous Cornish revivalist. He was 
an ordained man and a very strong 
Protestant. He went out to France later 
on as a chaplain of the United Board. 
Returning home on furlough, he called at 
Headquarters and told his experiences on 



150 ' LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 

the battlefield. ' You will be surprised/ 
said he, ' when I tell you that my greatest 
friend in Flanders was a Roman Catholic 
padre. He was one of the best men I ever 
knew, and we had an excellent working 
arrangement. On the battlefield if I came 
across any of his men, I would hand them 
on to him, and he would pass my men on 
to me. If he were not at hand, I would try 
my best to help the dying Roman Catholic 
soldier as I thought my friend would have 
helped him had he been there, and vice 
versa. I shall never forget/ said he, ' my 
last night in Flanders and our affectionate 
farewell. You know how strong a 
Protestant I have always been, and my 
convictions have never been stronger than 
they are to-day, but see this/ — and he 
unbuttoned his tunic and brought out a 
Crucifix which was hanging from his neck 
— ' this was the parting gift of my Roman 
Catholic friend, and as long as I live I shall 



' LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 151 

keep it as one of my most treasured 

possessions/ 

* * * 

As a rule there is not much romance in 
the story of a department that concerns 
itself with nothing but trading. But the 
story of the growth and development of 
the trading department of the Red Triangle 
is a romance. All along we have discour- 
aged trading for trading's sake in our huts, 
but in a crisis like the one brought about 
by the war, it is not for each individual 
or organisation to pick and choose, but to 
do what is needed by the State, and on that 
principle we have had to develop the 
trading side of our work enormously. 
Home and overseas, the department has 
been brilliantly led by men animated with 
the highest ideals of Christian service, 
who have been ready to take any risks, and 
whenever necessary to work day and 
night. Their task has been colossal and 



152 ' LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 

they have done magnificently. During 
the six months ending 31st May 1915, our 
turnover in France amounted to £32,594, 
whilst three years later the six months 
turnover had risen to £680,000. It was 
thrilling work during the German advance 
in March 1918, chasing our ever-moving 
centres in the Somme area, and keeping 
up their supplies or maintaining touch with 
Amiens during these terrible days, when 
for a whole week more than £600 daily was 
taken in the little ' Joy ' hut outside the 
Central Station. That meant day and 
night work at our Base Stores in France, 
and thanks to the cordial co-operation of the 
A.M.F.O. and the H.Q.L. of C. we were 
able to send forward 200 trucks from one 
port alone, containing 45,000 cases, or 1,500 
tons of food-stuffs, smokes, and ingredients 
for hot drinks — tea, coffee, and cocoa. 
From December 1914 to the middle of 
May 1918 — 1,350,000 cases were handled 



' LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ■ 153 

by our stores in France, representing the 
double handling of 50,500 tons of goods. 
During the retreat the Y.M.C.A. motor 
lorries became mobile centres of operation. 
They were filled up at the nearest stores 
available, and often travelled from eighty 
to ninety miles to a cross roads or con- 
venient point where men going in and 
coming out of the line were provided 
with the necessary supplies. For the six 
months ending November 30, 1917, our 
free gifts to the troops in France amounted 
to £157,000. This figure does not include 
the cost of huts and equipment, nor yet 
the general expenditure on the work — but 
it embraces the cost of the hostels for the 
relatives of wounded, and free food and 
drink for the walking wounded and for the 
men serving in advanced positions. 
* * * 

A distinguished officer of the Danish 
Army called at the headquarters of the 



154 ' LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 

British Y.M.C.A. after a visit to France, 
to acquaint himself with the history of 
our war work : — ' One day I stood on 
Messines Ridge/ said he, ' and all around 
me was devastation caused by war, shells 
were to be seen bursting all around, accom- 
panied by the deafening roar of the big 
guns. Overhead amidst the din could be 
heard the whirr of the engines of the 
German and Allied fighting machines. 
I felt thrilled to think I was in the midst 
of the greatest battle of history. Stepping 
aside a few yards I was surprised to find 
a dug-out with the Red Triangle sign. I 
could only exclaim, " What, these people 

here ! " ' 

* * * 

One of the funniest sights we saw in 
France was that of a tiny British corporal 
marching behind ten stalwart German 
prisoners, escorting them back to their 
quarters after they had finished orderly 



6 LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 155 

duty in one of our tents. The humour 
of the situation evidently appealed to 
him, for he winked as he passed us — quite 
an unsoldierly thing to do ! 

* * * 

Tommy has a knack of making himself 
comfortable, though his surroundings very 
often do not naturally suggest comfort. 
It is surprising what a snug bed and living 
room combined can be made out of a dis- 
carded hen-house ! A barn occupied by 
men of the Horse Guards Blue was 
ingeniously rigged up by its temporary 
tenants. One wall was missing and was 
made up with sacking — on the other side 
of this flimsy partition were the horses. 
The harness was hung round the walls, and 
four stakes driven into the ground for each 
bed. The wire that had bound hay bales 
had been ingeniously woven into wire 
mattresses stretched from stake to stake ; 
over it was stretched the sacking — also 



156 ' LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 

from hay bales — and over that again was 
a good thick layer of straw. There is 
never anything to be gained by grumbling, 
but everything by taking things cheerfully 
as they come and making the best of one's 
circumstances. 

* * * 

A Y.M.C.A. hut is a poor substitute for 
home, but our aim is to make every 
Y.M.C.A. as much like home as it is possible 
for it to be. It is surprising how much 
can be done by pictures, decorations and 
flowers, to give the home touch. A canary 
singing over the counter; a cat on the 
hearth ; a bunch of primroses or forget- 
me-nots ; a smile or a word of welcome ; 
a woman's voice ; a piano — family prayers 
at the close of the day — these are some of 
the things that count, and are numbered 
amongst the greatest assets of the Red 
Triangle. 



6 LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 157 

It is strange how often scenes and sounds 
of war and peace are intermingled. It is 
a common sight to see men and women 
going unconcernedly about their work, 
and children playing in towns that are 
habitually shelled or bombed. Stranger 
still is it to note the habits of the wild 
birds, constructing their nest amid scenes 
of war and in localities subject to constant 
bombardment. The Y.M.C.A. hut in 
Ploegsteert Wood was destroyed during a 
three hours' bombardment in May 1916, 
but whenever there came a few seconds' 
pause in the booming of the guns, the 
nightingales sang as unconcernedly as in 
the piping times of peace. We once 
heard, near Hersin, a sort of duet between 
a cuckoo and a big gun ; the bird punctu- 
ating with its call the thunder of the guns, 
and, as stated elsewhere, whilst the barrage 
was in full swing the thrushes on Kemmel, 
only a few hundred yards behind the guns, 



158 ' LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 

sang as sweetly and merrily as in the lanes 

and gardens of England. In the course of a 

brief visit to the American front in France 

we called at a little Y.M.C.A. shanty, 

badly strafed, within a mile or so of the 

enemy. Through the open window from 

which all glass had long since vanished, 

a swallow entered, and, perching on a 

wire stretched across the room, carolled 

joyously its simpl little song — a message 

truly of peace and eternal hope ! 
* * * 

The ' Walthamstow ' hut at Remy had 
to be temporarily abandoned during the 
German offensive. The leader in charge 
transferred operations to a dug-out across 
the way, which adjoined a clearing station. 
The inevitable caterer's boiler enabled him 
to keep up a constant supply of hot tea 
and coffee for the wounded. An Australian 
terribly mutilated was brought in. A 
happy smile, a few cheery words, and a 



4 LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 159 

cup of steaming hot cocoa made the 

Australian feel he had met a friend — and 

speaking slowly, in a voice that was 

scarcely louder than a whisper, he said, 

1 1 wonder why I am allowed to suffer 

like this/ ' I know why/ replied the 

Y.M.C.A. man; 'you are suffering like this 

so that two women I love — my mother and 

my sister — may live in peace and safety 

in the north of London. If it were not for 

the sacrifices you and thousands of other 

boys are making out here, that would be 

impossible/ The soldier lad was quiet 

for some time, and then whispered to his 

new-found friend — ' I 'm glad to go on 

suffering ! ' 

* * * 

The same secretary tells an interesting 
story of one of the bitter fights round 
Passchendaele. The wounded were being 
brought in on stretchers, and he was on 
the spot with hot drinks for the boys. 



i6o ' LE TRIANGLE ROUGE 9 

The guns were quiet for a moment and 
a voice was heard singing clearly and 
distinctly : 

' Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, 

Lead Thou me on. 
The night is dark, and I am far from home ; 

Lead Thou me on ! 
Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene ; one step enough for me.' 

The singer was a private, badly wounded 
and being carried in on a stretcher. The 
subsequent verses were drowned in the 
roar of battle, but those standing round 
could see from the movement of the 
wounded man's lips that he was still 
singing. Thus it is possible for a man 
to find his Saviour near him even amid the 
horror and noise of war. 

sjj * * 

One day in 1917 we stood outside a little 
Y.M.C.A. at Erquinghem, lost during the 
German advance in the following spring, 
and standing there we heard ' Grandmother' 



r * 




' LE TRIANGLE ROUGE ' 161 

speak. ' Grandmother/ it should be ex- 
plained, was a mighty howitzer. It was 
concealed under an improvised shed care- 
fully camouflaged, and was brought out 
on rails, in a horizontal position. As 
we watched, it was brought to the vertical 
and out shot a tongue of flame. The 
projectile was so huge we could watch its 
flight for miles until it disappeared from 
view in the distance. Listening intently 
we heard the explosion in the enemy's 
lines. Many a Y.M.C.A. on the Western 
Front is situated right amid the guns, and 
when they are fired one knows it — 
1 Grandmother * speaking, seems to shake 
the very foundations of the earth. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE EAST 

The Y.M.C.A. is doing excellent work — its efforts 
are appreciated immensely by all ranks in this force. 
Experience of Y.M.C.A. work in the Army has long 
since convinced me how invaluable its services are 
to us, both in peace and war. — The Late Lieut.- 
General Sir Stanley Maude. 

The Macedonian call ' Come over and help 
us ' has been repeated in our own days, 
and has come from near and far East. 
The Red Triangle has been quick to respond 
to the call, and a few incidents of its work 
are recorded here, though the story itself 
must be told after the war. The Chief 
Executive officer of the Indian National 
Council is himself an Indian, and not only 
has he, with the assistance of his Council, 
been responsible for the great work of the 
Red Triangle in India, but also for the 

162 



IN THE EAST 163 

extensive programme of work the Associa- 
tion has undertaken for Indian troops in 
East Africa, Mesopotamia, and Europe. 
In addition to work for British troops in 
India, the Y.M.C.A. has established work 
for Indian troops in a number of canton- 
ments, where service parallel to that under- 
taken for British troops is carried on, with 
the exception that no religious work is 
done, unless in the case of Christian 
Sepoys. 

The number of branches with British 
troops on August 1, 1917, was 43, worked 
by 40 European and American and 9 
Indian secretaries, and 1 honorary lady 
secretary. With Indian troops there were 
8 branches, worked by 1 European and 8 
Indian secretaries. These figures do not 
include the temporary work undertaken 
by the Army Y.M.C.A. with the Waziristan 
Field Force, which terminated during 
August 1917, and which included 4 British 



164 THE RED TRIANGLE 

and 4 Indian branches, with 3 European 
and 2 Indian secretaries. There was also 
1 European secretary at Headquarters on 
August 1, 1917, for Army work in India ; 
and in addition secretaries engaged in 
civilian Y.M.C.A. work in several stations 
gave part of their time to Army work, as 
well as many voluntary workers. 

In Burma a large barrack-room, made of 
wood and bamboo with a grass-thatched 
roof, houses the Association, which works 
amongst the men of the newly formed 
Burmese regiments. The whole building 
is on piles, and stands about six feet off 
the ground, thus preventing snakes and 
other unwelcome guests from coming in- 
side. The regiments comprise not only 
Burmans but Karens, Chinese, and 
Arakanese. Most of the men are from the 
deep jungle, and very few of them can read 
or write. The gramophone interests them 
enormously, and they look inside it to see 



IN THE EAST 165 

who is producing the sound, and will sit 
round in a circle listening to it for hours. 
Picture papers interest them, but usually 
they prefer holding the pictures upside 
down. The better educated men write a 
good deal on the free notepaper provided 
by the Y.M.C.A. Quartettes are sung by 
Karen and Chinese Christians. At the far 
end of the building is a huge image of the 
Buddha which was there before we came, 
and is used by some of the boys as a sort 
of chapel for private devotions. The boys 
have to take their choice between Christi- 
anity and Buddhism, and as we have three 
exceptionally good lamps there is much 
more light at the Y.M.C.A. end of the hall, 
and we have the better attendance in 
numbers at all events. 

Egypt, handicapped at first through lack 
of money, has also done magnificently. 
There is no more important centre of 
Association activity in the world than the 



166 THE RED TRIANGLE 

Esbekia Gardens in Cairo. Ever since the 
early days of the war, night after night, 
thousands of khaki-clad warriors have 
congregated in these lovely gardens, which 
under other auspices might easily have 
been one of the danger spots of Cairo, 
instead of a kind of modern ' City of 
Refuge ' from the temptations of the city. 
The Anzac hostel is another striking 
feature of the work in Cairo. In June 1917 
no fewer than 6893 soldiers slept in it, 
and that was not by any means a record 
month. The money for the purchase of 
this hostel as the permanent property of 
the Y.M.C.A. has been subscribed by 
members of the Baltic, but the discovery 
of the existence of a third mortgage has 
delayed the completion of the purchase. 
At Alexandria, Khartoum, Port Soudan, 
on both sides of the canal and far into the 
Sinai Peninsula, the Association outposts 
have been busy. A Red Triangle hut in the 



IN THE EAST 167 

desert was destroyed by a bomb dropped 
from a hostile aeroplane, but when the 
smoke subsided the centre pole was still 
standing and the Association flag flying. 
The huts at Kantara are amongst the 
finest in the world, and neither here nor 
anywhere else has it been necessary to put 
up a notice intimating that the Y.M.C.A. 
is 'open to all/ Tommy knows it, and 
regards the Red Triangle as his own peculiar 
possession. One cannot conceive of any 
place on earth where it is more needed 
than in one of these desert camps, where 
there is nothing to do, nowhere to go, and 
nothing to see but endless stretches of 
monotonous and dreary sand. Under such 
circumstances the Red Triangle is Tommy's 
tuck shop ; his church — with the chaplain 
as the parson; his post-office, concert 
hall, social room, school, and home. This 
is true of every fighting front, and that is 
why the Association has won for itself 



168 THE RED TRIANGLE 

a lasting place in the affections of the 
manhood of the Empire. 

A young soldier writing home the day 
after his arrival in Mesopotamia, said the 
first thing he struck on landing was the 
welcome sign of the Red Triangle. c And/ 
said he, ' if we are ordered next to the 
North Pole, I am sure we shall find it 
there ! ' The Y.M.C.A. secretary for 
Mesopotamia tells of a visit he paid to a 
centre on the way to Bagdad. It was a 
big bare marquee, crammed with men, 
with very little furniture in it — the diffi- 
culties of transport being so great in those 
days — just half a dozen tables and a few 
chairs, a heap of books, and a number of 
games. There were six inches of dust all 
over the floor, and the temperature was 
120 degrees in the shade, yet one thing 
that attracted the men to the Y.M.C.A. 
marquee was that it enabled them to 
escape the heat of their own bell tents. 



IN THE EAST 169 

Through the kindness of Sir Alfred Yarrow 
a Red Triangle motor launch has since 
then been provided for use on the Tigris, 
and has greatly simplified transport. The 
central Y.M.C.A. at Bagdad is one of the 
best of our war buildings, and is situated 
on the banks of the Tigris. An Association 
centre has been established on the reputed 
site of the Garden of Eden. 

* * * 

The story of the Red Triangle in Palestine 
is an epic in itself. For months the Associa- 
tion occupied dug-outs along the Palestine 
front, and in those days one secretary 
devoted the whole of his time to making 
personal purchases for officers and men, 
who could not themselves get away to any 
centre of civilisation to make purchases 
on their own account. Gaza was the first 
centre occupied in the Holy Land ; Beer- 
sheba, Jaffa, and Jerusalem being occupied 
later. At Jaffa the former German 



170 THE RED TRIANGLE 

Consulate was fitted up as a Y.M.C.A., and 
the Red Triangle as a matter of course has 
made its appearance on a big building in 
Jerusalem. 

Malta was a very important centre in 
the early days of the war, and the Y.M.C.A. 
flourished in its numerous hospital camps. 
In Macedonia the work has been difficult, 
but greatly appreciated in Salonica itself, 
as well as on the Varda and the Struma. 
The need has been urgent, and every effort 
has been made to meet that need. Trans- 
port difficulties have led to inevitable 
delays in the delivery of stores and equip- 
ment, but there are more than forty 
centres now, including five for Serbian 
soldiers. 

The Y.M.C.A. had its part in the ill-fated 
expedition to the Dardanelles. Mudros, 
Imbros, and Tenedos were centres of 
importance in those days, and the Red 
Triangle was at work in each island. 



IN THE EAST 171 

The urgent need of the troops was for soft 
drinks, and those ordinary canteen supplies 
that give variety to the soldiers' menu, and 
make the official rations palatable. The 
official canteens were powerless to meet the 
demand. We were anxious to help, but 
transport was the difficulty. At last, 
through the kindness of Lord Nunburn- 
holme, we were enabled to charter the 
s.s. Nero of the Wilson Line, and despatch 
it with a cargo of canteen supplies to the 
value of eleven thousand pounds to Mudros. 
A few days later the Peninsula was 
evacuated, but whilst they were there the 
men availed themselves to the full of the 
opportunity of buying supplementary food 
at British prices. When the Nero reached 
Mudros, Greek venders were selling our 
Tommies tinned fruit at twelve shillings 
a tin, and other prices were correspondingly 
high. 

In the centre of an official photograph 



172 THE RED TRIANGLE 

of Anzac showing the Bay, the camp, and 
the surrounding sandhills, are to be seen 
the letters ' Y.M.C.A/ They appear on a 
tiny marquee and close to it a big dug- 
out, measuring 30 by 19 feet, in which the 
Red Triangle carried through its programme 
of friendliness and good cheer, always 
under shell-fire. One night a fragment of 
a Turkish shell, weighing twelve and a half 
pounds, found its way through the roof 
of that dug-out. At Cape Helles there 
were three tiny tents fastened end on end. 
Had they been larger they could scarcely 
have escaped the attention of ' Asiatic 
Annie/ the big Turkish gun that dominated 
the position. As it was, the Officer Com- 
manding the advanced base at Lancashire 
Landing wrote to Headquarters to say 
how much the men appreciated those tents, 
and explained that the previous day an 
eight-inch high explosive shell from a 
Turkish gun had burst in the centre of the 



IN THE EAST 173 

middle tent and completely destroyed it. 
1 Fortunately/ said he, ' it didn't damage 
the piano, and still more fortunately/ he 
added, ' it didn't harm the gramophone/ 
That was curious, and we thought of some 
of the gramophones we had known, and 
felt it would have been no disaster if a 
shell had destroyed the lot ! This gramo- 
phone was different, however, for it had 
only just been wound up when the shell 
burst, but regardless of the bustle and 
confusion caused by the explosion, it kept 
on playing until it had finished the last 
note of the tune ! What a splendid object 
lesson for the Allies, to stick to the job 
they have on hand to the finish, or in 
other words, till victory crowns their 
efforts. Many months after the incident 
here recorded the Irish Y.M.C.A. was 
invited to open up at Rathdrum. The 
secretary responsible interviewed the O.C., 
and learning that he was a Catholic, 



174 THE RED TRIANGLE 

asked politely if he knew the work of the 
Y.M.C.A. ' Indeed I do/ was the reply. 
1 I was at Cape Helles when a shell burst 
in your tent. I was the officer in charge, 
and it was my duty to remove casualties. 
I went up to the tents fearing the worst, 
and shall never forget the smiling face of 
the Y.M.C.A. man behind the counter. It 
won me over completely/ 

A distinguished officer wrote : — 

' Your work has been of inestimable 
value to the troops, filling a gap which 
it is impossible for the Military 
Authorities to provide for. " Always 
first up, always working hard, and 
always welcome — the Red Triangle will 
always be gratefully remembered by 
the soldiers in the Great War." ' 



CHAPTER XIV 
SIDE LINES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 

The Y.M.C.A. has fashioned a girdle of mercy and 
loving-kindness round the world which will stand 
to their credit as long as the memory of this war 
exists. — Lord Curzon of Kedleston. 

There are numerous side-lines to this 
work, that are important enough in them- 
selves, the significance of which is scarcely 
realised by the general public, or even by 
those who are supporting the movement. 
Take, for example, the ' Snapshots from 
Home' movement, which represented the 
combined voluntary work of the photo- 
graphers of the United Kingdom, organised 
under the Red Triangle. Upwards of 
650,000 snapshots were sent out to soldiers 
and sailors on active service, each one 
bearing a message of love and a reminder 

175 



176 SIDE LINES OF 

of home. Sir Evelyn Wood, V.C., was one 
of the first to recognise the significance of 
the letter-writing that is done on such a 
large scale in the Y.M.C.A. tents. The 
veteran Field-Marshal pointed out that the 
benefit was two-fold : first, it occupied the 
time of the men ; and, secondly, it kept 
them in touch with their homes, both 
matters of first importance. ' That 's what 
my Dad always puts on his letters to 
Mummy/ said a little girl, pointing to the 
Red Triangle on the notepaper, when on a 
visit to the Crystal Palace. Fifteen to 
twenty million pieces of stationery are 
distributed free of charge to the troops 
monthly by the Y.M.C.A., and in four 
years the total issued amounted to upwards 
of nine hundred million pieces. Workers 
are often called upon to write letters for 
the men, and the latter make all sorts of 
mistakes with their correspondence. 
Sometimes they stamp their letters but 




A SHAKEDOWN" IX A LONDON HUT 




- service - 

, for 
Relatives 

Ban/erously 

- wounded * 



RELATIVES OF THE DANGEROUSLY WOUNDED ARE LOOKED AFTER 
BY THE Y.M.C.A. IN FRANCE 



THE RED TRIANGLE 177 

forget to address them, often they address 
them but forget the stamps. One lad was 
greatly excited and wanted the secretary 
in charge of the post-office to rescue two 
letters he had posted earlier in the after- 
noon. When asked why he wanted them 
back he blushed like a schoolgirl and 
stammered out, ' I Ve written two letters 
— one to my mother and the other to my 
sweetheart — and I Ve put them in the 
wrong envelopes ! ' The letters were not 
rescued, for more than five thousand had 
been posted before he discovered his 

mistake, and one wonders what happened ! 
* * * 

In Paris the Association has established 
a central inquiry bureau under the Hotel 
Edouard VII. off the Grand Boulevard. 
Two daily excursions are arranged around 
Paris, and two each week to Versailles. 
Representatives of the Red Triangle meet 
all the principal trains, day and night. 

M 



178 SIDE LINES OF 

The Hotel Florida is now run under the 
Association for British troops, whilst the 
American Y.M.C.A. has its Headquarters 
for France in the city, and has taken over 
several large hotels and other buildings. 

There is not the romance about the work 
of the Red Triangle in the munition areas, 
that there is in what it is doing for our 
fighting men, but there can be no doubt 
as to its importance. The munition workers 
as a class are as patriotic as any other 
class, but their work is drab, monotonous, 
and strenuous. Little has been done 
officially to bring home to the man who 
makes the shell the relationship of his 
work to the man who fires it ; or of the 
woman who works on the aeroplane to the 
man who is to fly in it, and yet the one 
can do nothing without the other. Things 
have changed for the better, but earlier 
in the war the output of munitions was 
positively hindered by the inadequacy of 



THE RED TRIANGLE 179 

the canteen facilities available to the 
munition workers. The Y.M.C. A. was the 
first organisation to attempt to meet this 
need on anything like a large scale, and 
eventually the work grew to considerable 
dimensions. Our work in the munition 
areas has been essentially a ladies' move- 
ment, and has largely consisted of canteen 
work. Other features are being increasingly 
added, music and singing have been 
organised successfully, lectures have been 
greatly appreciated, and several big athletic 
features introduced. Sporting events, also 
cricket and football leagues for munition 
workers, have been well supported. It is 
intensely interesting to see these people 
at work, and no other proof of British 
organising power and ability are necessary 
than a visit to some of the great works, 
many of which were not built for the 
purpose of manufacturing munitions of 
war, and others improvised since the com- 



180 SIDE LINES OF 

mencement of hostilities. At one place in 
which a canteen was formally opened by 
Princess Helena Victoria — who has taken 
the keenest interest in the development of 
our munitions department — from ordinary 
shipbuilding before the war great changes 
had taken place : a Super-Dreadnought 
was approaching completion ; several 
T.B.D/s were on the stocks, and some of 
the latest type of submarines were being 
built ; aeroplanes were being turned out 
at an incredible rate ; shells made by the 
thousand ; rigid air-ships were under con- 
struction; and, perhaps as wonderful as 
anything, artificial feet were being made 
in the same workshops. 

Incidentally might be mentioned here, 
the work the Association is doing for 
officers. There are four large hostels in 
London for the accommodation of officers, 
and one for officer-cadets. The young 



THE RED TRIANGLE 181 

officer is often not blessed with too much 
of this world's goods, and hotel life is 
expensive, and not always too comfortable. 
The success of these hostels has demon- 
strated the need. At Havre, Calais, St. 
Omer, Etaples, and many centres up the 
line, as well as in home camps, such as 
Ripon, we have the pleasure of doing some- 
thing to serve the officer, and in many 
English camps we have opened huts for the 
exclusive use of officer-cadets. Gidea Park, 
Berkhampstead, and Denham were amongst 
the first and most successful of these 
centres. The interned officers in Switzer- 
land and Holland are largely catered for 
by the Y.M.C. A. 

* * * 

It has been a pleasure to co-operate from 
time to time with the work of the R.A.M.C. 
and the Red Cross. In huts, in hospitals, and 
convalescent camps, in caring for the rela- 
tives of wounded, in work for the walking 



182 SIDE LINES OF 

wounded, and in many other ways the Red 
Cross and the Red Triangle have worked 
closely together. An officer of the R. A.M.C. 
(T.), has written the following interesting 
description of the work of the Y.M.C.A. 
for the walking wounded : — ' The O.C. the 
Divisional Walking Wounded Collecting 
Post was frankly worried as he sat in his 
tiny sandbagged hut with the D.A.D.M.S., 
and talked over all the problems which 
faced him in view of the " stunt " due to 
come off at dawn a few days later. " I Ve 
got plenty of dressings, and everything 
of that sort/' he said, "and, of course, I 
can get plenty more brought up by return- 
ing ambulance cars. But there is the 
question of food — there 's the rub. The 
numbers of wounded vary so greatly, and 
it 's not so easy to lay in a huge reserve of 
grub as it is of dressings. Of course, I Ve 
done my best, but I 'm rather worried/' 
"If that is all your worry well soon put 



THE RED TRIANGLE 183 

that right/' answered the optimist of the 
staff. "Well get the Y.M.C.A. chap on 
the job." "What can he do ? " "What 
can he not do rather? You wait and 
see. Come along and we 11 call on 
him now." 

' In a little shed of corrugated iron by the 
side of a shell-swept road they found him. 
With his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, 
he was pushing across the counter steam- 
ing mugs of cocoa and piles of buns to the 
crowd of hungry and clamouring Tommies 
who besieged his premises. He was not a 
young man. Not the strongest-hearted of 
Medical Boards would have passed him 
for service. To put it briefly, he had no 
right in the world to be where he was, in 
one of the nastiest corners of that particu- 
larly nasty place, Flanders. But there he 
was, roughing it with the rest of them, and 
to judge from his smiling countenance, 
thoroughly enjoying every particle of his 



184 SIDE LINES OP 

experience. " Hello, Major I " he called out 
cheerfully on seeing his two officer visitors. 
" Anything I can do for you to-day ? " 
" Rather ! A whole lot. Can we have a 
talk in your own place — away from the 
crowd? " The Y.M.C.A. man led the way 
to the six feet square hole in the ground 
which he called his billet, and there the 
medical staff officer explained his needs. 
" There 's a stunt on in a few days/' he said. 
" You may have guessed that. What can 
you do to help us ? You know the 
pressure under which the R.A.M.C. will be 
working. It 11 be a big job dressing all 
the casualties there are likely to be; but 
we '11 manage that bit. What we want 
is a hand in the feeding of them. You 
understand?" The face of the secretary 
glowed with excitement. " 1 11 do any 
mortal thing I can," he answered eagerly. 
"There'll be nothing doing here once the 
show starts, so 1 11 shut down, and bring 



THE RED TRIANGLE 185 

my whole stock over to your dressing 
station, and my staff too. We can feed 
several hundred if you 11 let us/' " What 
about the cost of the grub ? " " Not a 
word about cost, sir ! You 're welcome 
to it free, gratis, and for nothing, with 
all the pleasure in the world/' " Thanks 
awfully/' said the D.A.D.M.S. " That 's 
just what I wanted you to offer, and I 
thought you would ; your folks have 
helped us so often before/' " Jolly good 
job," mused the Y.M.C.A. man, "that I 
have kept hidden those extra cases of 
chocolates and sweet biscuits. I thought 
there might be something of this sort 
coming off." 

' Ere the grey dawn of a certain morn- 
ing brought the nerve-racking inferno of 
barrage and counter-barrage, the entire 
stock of the canteen was installed in the 
larger of the two huts which formed the 
collecting post. Boxes of biscuits, choco- 



186 SIDE LINES OF 

lates, and cigarettes with the lids knocked 
off, stood ranged along the wall, ready for 
the tired and hungry guests who would soon 
appear. Outside, in two huge cauldrons, 
gallons of strong cocoa were brewing 
merrily. Little was spoken by the men 
standing around, as they waited, nerves a 
trifle on edge, for the breaking of the 
storm. Suddenly from somewhere in the 
rear came the hollow boom of a "heavy," 
the artillery signal, and in an instant every 
battery in the area had hurled its first 
salvo of the barrage. The air was full of 
noise, the rolling roar of the guns at 
" drum fire," the hissing and screaming of 
flying shells, the echoes of far-away ex- 
plosions. The ground trembled as if an 
earthquake had come. The battle had 
begun. 

* The O.C. looked in at the door of the hut. 
" Everything ready ? " he asked. " Ready 
and waiting," answered the Y.M.C.A. man, 



THE RED TRIANGLE 187 

and very soon in twos and threes the 
wounded began to dribble in, and shortly 
a steady stream of battered humanity was 
straggling down the road, to halt at the 
welcome sight of the hut with the Red Cross 
flag by its door. How some of them 
limped over every weary step of the way 
was beyond understanding. With shat- 
tered limbs and mangled flesh they came, 
worn, hungry, thirsty, in agony, some 
stumbling alone, some helped along by less 
grievously injured comrades. In a pitiful 
throng they gathered around the dressing 
station. 

- The quick eyes of the R. A.M.C. sergeant 
picked out the worst cases, and these 
were hurried into the hut where the 
medical officers plied their sorrowful trade. 
The others sat down and waited their turn 
with the stolid patience of the British 
soldier when he is wounded, and among 
them worked an Angel of Mercy, an elderly 



188 SIDE LINES OF 

angel clad in a flannel shirt, and a pair 
of mud-stained khaki trousers. Amid the 
poor jetsam of the fight went the Y.M.C.A. 
man with his mugs of cocoa and his biscuits, 
his chocolate and his cigarettes, as much a 
minister of healing as was the surgeon with 
his dressings and anodynes. All the men 
were bitterly cold after their long night of 
waiting in the old front trench, or were 
dead beat with the nervous strain of the 
action and the pain of their wounds. All 
were hungry. A few no longer cared 
greatly what more might happen to them, 
for they had reached the limit of endur- 
ance, as surely as they had reached the 
limit of suffering. But even to those last 
the warm drink and the food and, perhaps 
more than anything else, the soothing 
nicotine, brought back life and hope in place 
of apathy and despair. ' God bless you, 
sir/ murmured a man here and there. 
But the greater part could find no words 



THE RED TRIANGLE 189 

to speak the gratitude which their eyes 
told forth so clearly.' 

This little story is not the tale of one 
actual incident. It is only the stereotype 
of scenes that have been acted and re- 
acted often and often at the Front. Time 
and time again has the Red Triangle come 
to the aid of the Red Cross, placing its 
workers and its stores unreservedly at the 
disposal of the Royal Army Medical Corps. 
When the wounded have been pouring into 
the dressing stations in hundreds, the 
Y.M.C.A. workers have taken over the 
responsibility of feeding them, and have 
halved the cares of the overwrought 
R.A.M.C. This they have done not once 
but unnumbered times, and what gratitude 
they have earned from their guests ! The 
wounded man can scarcely realise what he 
owes to the surgeon who tends his injuries ; 
but he does appreciate his debt to the man 
who feeds him and gives him the ' fag ' 



igo SIDE LINES 

for which he has been craving. The cocoa 
and cigarettes of the Y.M.C.A. do not 
figure among the medicaments of the 
Pharmacopoeia, yet many a ' walking 
wounded ' will swear to you that they 
have saved his life — as perhaps they 
have. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE RED TRIANGLE AND THE WHITE 
ENSIGN 

Surely the Almighty God does Hot intend this war 
to be just a hideous fracas, a bloody, drunken orgy. 
There must be purpose in it all ; improvement must 
be born out of it. In what direction ? France has 
already shown us the way, and has risen out of her 
ruined cities with a revival of religion that is most 
wonderful. England still remains to be dug out of 
the stupor of self-satisfaction and complacency which 
the great and nourishing condition has steeped her 
in. And until she can be stirred out of this con- 
dition, until a religious revival takes place at home, 
just so long will the war continue. When she can 
look on the future with humbler eyes and a prayer 
on her lips, then we can begin to count the days 
towards the end. — Admiral Sir David Beatty, 
K.C.B., M.V.O., D.S.O., K.C.V.O. 

This chapter is written in a ' sleeper ' at 
the close of a busy day in the North. The 
day has been made a memorable one by a 
visit to the Queen Elizabeth, as she lay 
at her moorings in one of our great naval 

101 



192 THE RED TRIANGLE AND 

bases. She is one of the greatest instru- 
ments of war in the world, and it was a 
revelation to enter one of the gun turrets of 
the super-dreadnought, to look through the 
periscope, or see the ingenious mechanism 
that moved those mighty guns, and lifts 
into position the huge projectile that is 
capable of delivering death and destruction 
to an enemy many miles away. It was 
more than interesting to visit the wireless 
rooms, where ceaseless watch is kept by 
day and night, and to see the wonderful 
orderliness of everything, and to note that 
every one on board was ready, and their 
only fear that the German Fleet might 
never be tempted out again. The visit to 
the Queen Elizabeth left one thinking of the 
service the Red Triangle has been able to 
render to the White Ensign. During the 
war there are not as many opportunities 
for work amongst naval men as in peace 
time, but there is all the more need that 






4 






> 



••'.=■ 



■ -Vr... "" 



^4 






' I If 




* 



, ;; ; : 












THE WHITE ENSIGN 193 

when the men are ashore everything that 
is possible should be done for them. The 
Scottish National Council have up-to-date 
well-equipped hostels and recreation-rooms 
in several naval centres, and those at 
Edinburgh and Glasgow are thronged with 
bluejackets. South of the Border there 
are many fine hostels and recreation-rooms 
for sailors, and in scores of centres in 
England, Wales, and Ireland the Red 
Triangle is catering successfully for the 
needs of our bluejackets. The biggest 
crowd of all is to be found in the quarters 
occupied by the Y.M.C.A. at the Crystal 
Palace, where thousands of men every day 
use the Y.M.C.A. as their club, and find in it 
their home. We shall never know all we 
owe to our splendid Navy, and that debt 
can never be fully paid. At the close of the 
war we are planning to erect permanent 
hostels and institutes for sailors in several 
naval bases at home and in some of the 

N 



194 THE RED TRIANGLE 

great foreign stations. Much appreciated 
war work for sailors is being carried on now 
at Brindisi and Taranto, for the men of 
the drifters employed on minesweeping 
in the Mediterranean, also at Malta, 
Mudros, and other centres overseas. 

A demand for a Y.M.C.A. on a battleship 
came from the men of H.M.S. Conqueror, 
and it has been found most helpful. 

Many isolated naval stations round the 
British coast are supplied with cabinets, 
each one containing a gramophone, library, 
a supply of writing materials, and games. 
For obvious reasons it would be imprudent 
whilst the war is on to indicate the centres 
by name in which the Red Triangle is 
serving the men of the Navy, but there will 
be a great story to tell when the war is 
over. 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE RELIGION OF THE RED TRIANGLE 

The work of the Y.M.C.A. is, to my mind, one of the 
outstanding features of this war. Their efforts, 
along with other agencies working for the highest 
welfare of the Army, have shown a true catholic 
spirit, and made it easier for our soldiers to live a 
noble, true and clean life. May God's blessing 
follow their increasing influence. — The Chaplain- 
General to the Forces. 

The Y.M.C.A. has been one of the really great 
things which have come into their own in this 
world crisis. It has been a Hindenburg Line of 
the Christian faith. — Dr. Michael Sadler, Vice- 
Chancellor of Leeds University. 

The Y.M.C.A. is not in camp as a rival to 
the ordinary Church organisations, nor yet 
to supplant or in any conceivable way to 
undermine the influence of the chaplains. 
Its large and commodious huts and tents 
have been used in thousands of camps for 
the official Church Parade services, and in 
many cases there has been no other suitable 

195 



196 THE RELIGION OF 

room available. We have counted it a 
privilege on Sunday mornings to place our 
equipment unreservedly at the disposal of 
all the official chaplains who desired to use 
it. We have welcomed the opportunity 
of assisting the great and important work 
the chaplains are doing for the men of His 
Majesty's Forces, for the Y.M.C.A. is itself 
a wing of the great Christian army, and has 
sometimes been described as the Church 
in action. Apart from the support in men 
and money it has received from members 
of the Churches, the war work of the Red 
Triangle would have been impossible. The 
Y.M.C.A. is not a church, and will never 
become one. It administers no sacraments, 
its membership is confined to one sex ; it 
discourages in all its branches the holding 
of meetings that clash with those of the 
Churches, and in every possible way each 
member unattached is encouraged to join 
the Church of his choice. 



THE RED TRIANGLE 197 

In the course of a striking letter to The 
Challenge of July 12, 1918, a correspondent 
said : — ' We turn, for an example, to the 
Y.M.C.A. Conceal the unpleasant truth 
how we may, the outstanding religious 
performance of this war in the eyes of the 
public at large has not been the daily 
services in Church — not even the Holy 
Communion — but the work done in the 
Y.M.C.A. huts. It is along those lines 
that we must travel if we are to win the 
world. For the medisevaUy-minded, for 
the intellectually timid, there is always 
Rome. But it is not by those that the new 
England will be built, and it is the new 
England we must save for Christ/ 

Another writer to the same Anglican 
journal said it had been stated that ' after 
the war there would be a holy Roman 
Church and a holy Y.M.C.A., but no more 
Church of England/ The fact of the 
matter is the Y.M.C.A. is not making the 



198 THE RELIGION OF 

work of the Churches unnecessary, but 
rather it is giving the ordinary man a new 
conception of what Christianity really is, 
and is thus helping to interpret the churches 
to the masses, and is acting as a bridge or 
a communication trench between the 
organised forces of Christianity in the front 
line, so to speak, and the great masses away 
back in reserve, on which they desire to 
draw. Some people have spoken sneeringly 
of ' canteen religion ' ; the soldier never 
does — and why should he ? There is 
nothing new about it, for it is as old as the 
early days of Christianity, only the gospel 
of the ' cup of cold water ' has been adapted 
to the needs of modern warfare, so that 
the man in the firing-line knows it from 
experience as the gospel of the ' cup of hot 
coffee/ Straggling back to a clearing 
station, wounded, plastered with mud, 
and racked with pain, the most eloquent 
of sermons would not help him, but a hot 



THE RED TRIANGLE 199 

drink, a few biscuits or even a cigarette, 
if given in the name of the Master may put 
new heart and life into him, and give him 
fresh courage for the way. The Churches 
realise this, and have given us of their 
best as far as helpers are concerned. 

We have a vivid recollection of visiting 
the big Y.M.C.A. hut in the Cavalry Camp 
at Rouen in 1915. It was the ordinary 
week-night service, and more than six 
hundred men were present. A famous 
Scottish preacher had conducted the service, 
and at the close we chatted with him for a 
few minutes in the quiet room. ' Before I 
came out to France/ said he, ' I knew you 
had a great opportunity. Now I know 
that the greatest spiritual opportunity in 
history rests on your shoulders — is with 
the Y.M.C.A/ And yet there is a way 
of doing spiritual work that would make 
all spiritual work in camp absolutely 
impossible. We remember visiting a big 



200 THE RELIGION OF 

hut one day — it did not sport the Red 
Triangle, but was beautifully furnished. 
Over the door was a bold device ' A Home 
from Home ! All Welcome ! ' On enter- 
ing, the first thing one saw was the text 
' Behold your sins will find you out ! ' 
And a few yards further on ' The wages 
of sin is death/ ' No smoking ! ' was 
another notice, and yet another, ' This 
hut will be closed every evening from seven 
to eight for a gospel service/ Religion 
to appeal to the soldier must be natural 
and not forced, and must be free from 
controversy and unreality. The British 
soldier hates a sham, and instinctively 
classes the hypocrite with the Hun. He 
may not understand our Shibboleths ; he 
has no use for our controversies, but he 
can and does understand the Life of the 
Master, when he sees the beauty of that 
Life reflected in some humble follower of 
His, who day by day is risking his life at 



THE RED TRIANGLE 201 

the Front, that he may supply a cup of 
cocoa to a wounded soldier, or who is 
slaving behind a Y.M.C.A. refreshment 
counter at home, and doing uncongenial 
work for the love of Christ. 

* * * 

When it was decided to send the Indian 
troops to France, the Y.M.C.A. offered its ser- 
vices to the Indian Government. The offer 
was refused. At last, however, permission 
was given to supply recreation marquees for 
the use of the Indian Army in France, but 
only on condition that there should be no 
proselytising, no preaching, no prayers, no 
hymn singing, no Testaments or Bibles 
given, and no tracts. The Y.M.C.A. 
accepted the conditions, and though some 
of its friends felt it meant lowering the 
flag, it has loyally kept its promise, and 
most people realise to-day that this was 
one of the greatest pieces of Christian 
strategy of our times. A visit to one of the 



202 THE RELIGION OF 

Red Triangle huts or tents in an Indian 
camp is a revelation. You hear the 
Mohammedan call to prayer, see the tiny 
mosque, and realise in how many and 
varied ways it is possible for the Y.M.C.A. 
to be of service to these brave men of 
another faith. A professor reported at 
one of the big base camps as a worker. 
He had come to lecture to the troops, and 
when asked by the leader as to his sub- 
jects replied, ' Sanscrit and Arabic.' The 
leader wondered how on earth he could 
make use of a man as a lecturer to 
British Tommies, who only lectured on 
those two obscure and difficult topics. 
The professor found his niche, however, 
teaching the Mohammedan priest to read 
his Koran — the leader commenting — 
' The more he knows it, the less he will 
trust it.' 

It is interesting to note how well these 
Indian heroes get on with our own Tommies. 



THE RED TRIANGLE 203 

They play their games and sometimes sing 
their songs. When ' Tipperary ' was all 
the rage, the Indians had their own version 
of the chorus, which they sang with great 
enthusiasm. It ran thus : 

' Bura dur hai Tipperary, 
Bura dur hai kouch ho, 
Bura dur hai Tipperary, 

Sukipas powncheniko, 
Ram, ram, Piccadilly, 
Salam Leicester Square. 
Bura, bura dur hai Tipperary, 

Likem dil hoa pus ghai.' 

On one occasion the secretary of an 
important base said he had arranged a 
new stunt for us that evening — the formal 
opening of a hut in the Indian Cavalry 
Hospital Camp. We arrived to find the 
hut crowded, and a great banquet arranged 
in our honour. Nothing need be said as to 
the banquet or its disastrous results as far as 
we are concerned! The Indians enjoyed 
it, and that was the important thing. 



204 THE RELIGION OF 

Before the banquet we had the privilege 
of greeting the men and welcoming them 
to the Y.M.C.A., and after we had finished, 
the leading Mohammedan in the camp 
mounted the platform and gave a great 
oration in honour of the Christian Associa- 
tion. He was followed by the leading 
Brahmin, and he in turn by the senior 
Sheik, all speaking in most cordial terms of 
the Y.M.C. A. In the midst of the orations, 
a stately Indian advanced solemnly and 
placed a garland of flowers round my neck. 
Thrice this garlanding process was repeated 
on different occasions — lovely roses and 
sweet peas — and it was a great and much 
appreciated honour, though it made one 
feel a trifle foolish at the time. After the 
banquet we proceeded to the adjoining 
recreation tent, and it was an inspiration to 
see it crammed from end to end with men 
of many religions and different races, all 
happy and contented and all usefully 



THE RED TRIANGLE 205 

employed. On the platform a ' budginee ' 
or Indian concert was proceeding ; a 
crowd of men at the tables were learning 
to write ; another crowd receiving a lesson 
in English ; a large group looking at 
pictures and illustrated magazines, whilst 
others were playing games or listening 
enraptured to the strains of the Indian 
records on the gramophone. The CO. 
who took us round, said that when the 
men came to France not one of them could 
even sign his name to his pay book, they 
all had to do it by means of thumb-prints. 
1 To-day/ said he, ' every man can sign 
his name, and many can write an intelligent 
letter, and they have learned everything in 
the Y.M.C.A.' A few days previously an 
Indian of some rank stood with folded 
arms, his back against the wall, in that very 
tent. He said nothing, but took in every- 
thing, and when the marquee closed for 
the night and the dusky hero warriors 



206 THE RELIGION OF 

retired to their tents, he spoke to the Indian 
secretary in charge. ' I have watched you 
men/ said he; 'you are not paid by the 
Government, you come when you like and 
you go when you like. There is only one 
religion in the world that would send its 
servants to do what you are doing — to 
serve and not to proselytise. When this 
war is over and we return to India, I want 
you to send one of your men to my village. 
My people are all Hindus, but they will 
do what I tell them. I have been watching 
you carefully, and I have come to the con- 
clusion that Christianity will fit the East 
as it can never fit the West.' One of the 
lessons of the Red Triangle is that you can 
never win men by antagonising them, or 
by speaking disrespectfully of the things 
they hold dear. Love must ever be the con- 
queror, and the love of all loves is the love 

of God revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ. 
# * # 



THE RED TRIANGLE 207 

Our Jewish friends were surprised and 
delighted in the dark days at the close of 
1914, to find that the doors of the Y.M.C. A. 
were thrown widely open to their padres, 
who could gather in soldiers of their 
community to worship God in their own 
way in the huts of the Red Triangle. They 
have not been slow to show their appre- 
ciation — several Y.M.C. A. huts have been 
given officially by Jews ; one well-known 
and much used hostel bears the name 
' Jewish Y.M.C.A./ and Jewish padres will 
go to any trouble or inconvenience to help 
our work at home or overseas. No Red 
Triangle hut can be used for proselytising 
by Catholic, Protestant, Moslem, or Jew — 
that goes without saying — but any official 
chaplain is welcome to the use of our huts 
for instructing his own people in their own 
faith. 

A striking article recently appeared in a 
Catholic journal, from which we cull the 



208 THE RELIGION OF 

following paragraphs, expressing as they 
do another point of view : — 

'"R.C.," "C. of E.," " Y.M.C.A."— these 
three are the religions of the Front. The drum- 
head service, whilst nominally " C. of E.," is, of 
course, more a military parade than a religious 
function. It is not without a certain amount 
of picturesque Army ceremonial, but to the 
Catholic soldier, as a Catholic, the spectacle is an 
uninteresting one. The Y.M.C.A., too, I think, 
would not claim to be a religion. It is perhaps 
a religious institution ; a kind of spiritual ration- 
dump. Its huts, even during a cinema show, 
and at the counters where they sell Woodbines 
and chocolates, have a Christianised atmosphere. 
No soldier fears to be thought "too good" through 
attending a Y.M.C.A. service. That is, perhaps, 
where its undoubtedly great influence comes in. 
It gives the impression, one supposes, to these 
soldiers that here they have what the P.S.A. 
fraternity call " a man's religion for man." It 
caters for the frequent English soul which (per- 
haps in the Charity of God) finds a path to Heaven 
in the singing of second-rate hymns on Sunday 
evening ; in the constant repetition of " Abide 
with me," and " God, our help in ages past." 




: %> s 



THE RED TRIANGLE 209 

It is difficult to say if the influence of the Y.M.C.A. 
is much responsible for the remarkably even, and 
considering all things, somewhat high moral code 
of the Army out here. Rather, perhaps (Deo 
gratias), it is an English heritage from the past. 
Most emphatically one cannot help being struck 
by the excellent moral lives that many of these 
men live, when all things are considered. Of 
course, to a large extent, there is the lack of 
occasions of sin. Drunkenness, most possibly, 
is rare because the authorities have greatly 
restricted, and wisely, the hours of drinking, and 
the beer, etc., available, even if taken in large 
quantities, is rarely intoxicating. Frankly, it 
appears that the good influence of the Y.M.C.A. 
is derived from the temporal comforts and con- 
veniences it offers to the much-tried B.E.F. men. 
I stood outside a Y.M.C.A. building one night, 
in the worst of weather, weather as foul as it can 
be in France in war time. Three rain-sodden 
Canadian infantrymen trudged along towards 
the place, and their ears caught the sound of 
some execrable piano-strumming. " Holy Hell," 
said one, " there 's some music there ; come on ! '> 
That is the story, in epitome, of the Y.M.C.A. 
In the mercy of God, it is a good one." 



210 THE RED TRIANGLE 

A young soldier sent to an English paper 

the following interesting account of a 

Communion Service held in one of our huts 

at the Front : — 

' The following Tuesday, just as our company 
was going " up the line " to the trenches, a 
Communion service was held in the rest-room of 
the Y.M.CA. hut. I attended it along with 
nine other men, and the service was conducted 
by a well-known Scottish Y.M.CA. worker, who 
at the time was acting as the leader of the hut. 
In that little room we ten men in khaki were 
verily in the presence ot the Unseen. I never 
realised Christ to be so near as when we handled 
the elements. For myself I can truly say that, 
in the grey dawn of the following morning, I went 
up to meet the enemy with a strange peace, and 
a deep assurance in my soul that, come what 
might, I need fear no evil, knowing that He was 
with me — and so it proved to be. Our time in the 
trenches was the most exciting I have yet experi- 
enced, but He kept near, and so " all 's well." ' 



CHAPTER XVII 

STORIES OF THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 

I am sending you a pound note, the first I ever 
received, as I am a poor old woman not able to 
work. To maintain my home I used to take in wash- 
ing, but now I cannot even do my own, but the 
other Sunday, when I shook hands with one that I 
used to wash for, he put that bit of paper in my 
hand, but said nothing, so I received it as part 
payment for work done over seven years ago, and 
when I looked at it, I thanked God, and said I 
would give it to some good cause, and I think I 
cannot do better than help you to get shelter for 
the soldiers. God bless 'em. 

More than five hundred thousand men have 
signed the War Roll pledge of allegiance 
to our Lord Jesus Christ, which has now 
been formally adopted by the Churches, 
and which reads as follows : 

' I hereby pledge my allegiance to 
the Lord Jesus Christ, as my Saviour 
and King, and by God's help will fight 

211 



212 STORIES OF 

His battles for the Victory of His 
Kingdom/ 

Many have no doubt forgotten their 
promise, but for many it has meant the 
beginning of a new life, and to thousands 
of parents the knowledge that the boy, 
who was their all, signed this declaration 
before making the supreme sacrifice, has 
brought untold comfort. 

Wherever practicable a Quiet Room for 
prayer and Bible study is included in our 
camp outfit, also a book-stall for Testa- 
ments, pledge cards, and religious literature. 
Millions of Testaments and gospel portions 
have been distributed free of charge, and 
realising the difficulty of obtaining gospel 
booklets or tracts that appeal to men, a 
new one from the pen of the General 
Secretary was issued each of the first 
thirty weeks of the war. The approved 
plan has been to have family prayers, no 
matter how brief, as far as practicable in 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 213 

every hut, every night, and if this feature 
of the programme is not popular, the fault 
is usually to be found in the one who 
leads. 

A casual observer, after visiting a 
Y.M.C.A. hut, sometimes comes to the 
conclusion that the Association is doing a 
great social work, but is not much as a 
religious force. It is not difficult to under- 
stand that point of view. He has seen 
two or three hundred men clamouring at 
the refreshment counter for coffee, buns 
or cigarettes ; the billiard tables have been 
fully occupied ; hundreds of soldiers were 
writing letters at the tables provided for 
the purpose, and hundreds joining in some 
rowdy chorus, or heartily laughing at a 
humorous song or funny sketch. Where 
then does the spiritual work of the Red 
Triangle come in ? The best answer is to 
quote what has actually happened. 

To the south-west of Salisbury Plain 



214 STORIES OF 

there was before the war a tiny village. 
To-day it is the centre of a big camp, 
which, incidentally, contains several 
Y.M.C.A. huts. The leader of No. 4 was 
talking to the Church of England padre 
one morning. They were warm friends 
and the chaplain was frank in his remarks : 
' I think you are overdoing it/ said he, 
1 by having prayers in the hut every night. 
Surely it would be better/ he added, ' if you 
concentrated on one evening of the week 
instead/ ' I have thought and prayed 
about it/ replied the leader, ' and it is a 
matter of principle with me. These dear 
boys are all going to the Front next week, 
and no matter what the programme of the 
day, I feel we ought to finish at night with 
a public acknowledgment of God/ ' Very 
good/ replied the padre, ' if that is your 
conviction, carry on ! Take prayers your- 
self this evening/ And he did. He was 
no orator ; he was not a college man, 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 215 

neither was he ordained. It was a simple 
little service, and did not take more than 
ten or fifteen minutes from start to finish. 
There was an opening hymn, one of the 
old familiar ones, that took the lads away 
back to the homes of their childhood. A 
short passage of scripture was read, followed 
by a few straight but sympathetic words of 
exhortation and a brief closing prayer. 
That was all, and the same thing, no 
doubt, took place in hundreds of centres 
the same night. Prayers over and the 
' King ■ sung, the leader came down from 
the platform, where a young private greeted 
him and shook his hand till it hurt saying, 
1 1 want to thank you for giving me a new 
vision of a God I once knew/ Walking 
towards the centre of the hall, a young 
subaltern greeted him saying, ' I want to 
thank you for that little service ; it has 
been no end of a help to me, and I should 
like to give you this for your work/ so 



216 STORIES OF 

saying he handed him an envelope, and 
looking inside he found a letter from the 
lieutenant's mother, containing thirty 
shillings in postal orders to be spent by 
him in camp. The service had helped him, 
and that was his thankoffering. The hut 
cleared, the men retired for the night to 
their sleeping quarters. A solitary soldier 
lingered by the doorway as if he wanted 
some one to speak to him. ' Good-night, 
my lad/ said the leader, ' can I do anything 
for you ? ' Instead of replying the soldier 
burst out crying, and later said, ' If you will 
you can save me from a great crime ! ' 
' Save you from a crime — whatever do 
you mean ? ' And then the trooper told 
his story. There was nothing uncommon 
about it. He and his brother had made 
love to the same girl, their mother had 
intervened, ' and/ he said, ' I have written 
to my mother this evening a letter that no 
boy should write to his mother, and after 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 217 

attending your service to-night, I feel I 
would give all I Ve got to take back that 
letter ! ' The letter was found and de- 
stroyed, and the soldier rejoiced in what 
he regarded as a great deliverance. This 
is no story of an orthodox revival, but of 
the kind of thing that may be taking place 

hundreds of times any week. 
* * * 

In the early days the famous 



Division assembled in one of the great 
camps near Winchester. Regiments and 
units were there from India, South Africa — 
from all parts of the world. Rain came 
down in torrents and the mud was appal- 
ling. The huge Red Triangle tents were 
crowded from morning till night and the 
devoted workers, all too few in number, 
had neither time nor strength for religious 
work in the ordinary acceptance of the 
term. They could have limited their 
canteen work, and closed the refreshment 



218 STORIES OF 

counter excepting for a few hours daily. 
That would have been the easier plan, 
and would have given them the oppor- 
tunity of devoting themselves to concerts 
and meetings in the evenings. The alter- 
native would have been to spend and be 
spent in serving the material needs of the 
men, trusting that God would use the 
atmosphere of the place and the personal 
contact of the workers to influence the 
men, and thus make up for their inability 
to do much in the meeting line. They 
chose the latter plan, and the leader 
retiring for the night would throw himself 
on his bed and sometimes fall asleep 
without undressing. At times suffering 
from the reaction, he would ask himself 
the question, ' Is it worth while ? Am I 
doing the right thing ? ' The answer came 
the night before the men left for the Front. 
It had been a record day, every moment 
had been crowded, and they had sold out. 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 219 

The majority had retired for the night, a 
few remained to tidy up the tents. This 
task accomplished, a group of soldiers 
gathered round the leader, and the talk 
soon turned quite naturally to some of the 
deepest problems of life. Presently a stal- 
wart young Gordon Highlander told of his 
home in far away Scotland, of his farewell 
to his dear old mother before he went out 
to India, and of the promise he made her — 
the promise he had not kept — to read his 
Bible every day, to lead a pure clean life, and 
to keep clear of drink. The atmosphere 
of that crowded Y.M.C.A. tent had brought 
it all back to him and, unknown to the 
staff, he had renewed his vows to God and 
his mother. In making this confession 
he was overcome by emotion, and throwing 
his arms round the leader's neck he sobbed 
out the story of his repentance. There is 
no more moving sight than the anguish of 
a strong man, probably no sight that gives 



220 STORIES OF 

more joy in Heaven than the tears that tell 

of the return of the one that had been lost. 
* * * 

A young Canadian officer who had lost 
a leg and an arm wrote to me before sailing 
to Montreal from Bristol in May 1918, and 
this is what he said : — ' 1 would like to tell 
you how much we have appreciated the 
Y.M.C.A. I came over with the first batch 
of Canadians ; we were drafted to Larkhill, 
Salisbury Plain. After leaving my home 
— a godly home — I fell into the hands of 
very ungodly people and sank very, very 
deep in. I was lying on the roadside much 
the worse for drink. I was down and 
couldn't get up ; comrades and every one 
seemed to have left me. I saw one of 
your cars rush by. When it had passed 
about a hundred yards, out jumped a 
Y.M.C.A. man. He came back to me and 
said, "Come along my friend, I will take 
you to your hut." I looked at him and 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 221 

said, " I Ve sunk too low for a man like 
you to touch me." He helped me up, 
took me to my hut, and said, "This is my 
work in the Y.M.C.A., to help the helpless. 
Come in and have a cup of tea with me 
to-morrow." Shamefaced, I went the next 
day. He was there to greet me ; he talked 
and prayed with me, but I saw no light 
until one night in the trenches, I thought 
I heard this man praying, and I heard it 
again and again, and had no rest till I 
laid my sins at the foot of the Cross. 
Although I am going home with a leg and 
an arm off, I have a clean heart washed in 
the Blood of the Lamb. I have visited 
many huts, but that was the only man who 
spoke to me personally about my sinful 
condition. Your leaders can do much if 
they will. God bless the work and the 
workers. I will enclose this leader's card so 
that you can let him know his prayers fol- 
lowedme up to the trenches. God bless him! ' 



222 STORIES OF 

Cecil Thompson, the leader referred to, 

never saw this letter. Long before it was 

written he had ' gone west/ had passed to 

his reward, one of the Red Triangle martyrs 

of Salisbury Plain. But he ' shall in no 

wise lose his reward/ for it is work like 

this that pays, and the spirit of Cecil 

Thompson lives on in the lives of those 

who have been won, not by his eloquence, 

but by the personal contact of a man who 

had yielded himself to become a channel 

for the Divine blessing. 

* * * 

The greatest romance of the Red Triangle 
is the romance of its religious work. War 
always seems to have one of two effects 
upon the lives of those who participate in 
it — either it hardens a man and makes 
him callous, or else it purines and ennobles 
him. The Chaplains, the Churches, the 
Y.M.C.A., the Church Army, the C.E.T.S., 
the Salvation Army, and countless other 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 223 

organisations and individuals are always 

at work, trying to counteract the power of 

the downward pull. It was our youngest 

General, the late Brig.-Gen. R. B. Bradford, 

V.C., M.C., who addressed to his men in 

France, shortly before his death, the 

following stirring words : — ' I am going to 

ask you to put your implicit trust and 

confidence in me, to look upon me not only 

as your Brigadier, but as your friend. By 

the help of God I will try and lead you to 

the best of my ability, and remember your 

interests are my interests. As you all 

know, a few days from now we are going to 

attack ; your powers of endurance are going 

to be tested. They must not fail you. 

Above all, pray ; more things are wrought 

by prayer than this world dreams of. It 

is God alone who can give us the victory, 

and bring us through this battle safely.' 
# * * 

It is said that General Smuts' attention 



224 STORIES OF 

was drawn to Herbert Schmalz's picture, 
'The Silent Witness/ in the Royal Academy. 
It showed the interior of a French church, 
and many wearied and wounded French 
soldiers huddled together on the floor. 
A soldier with a wounded arm was awak- 
ened by the pain, and raising himself on 
his un wounded arm saw the figure of the 
Christ, the silent witness of his suffering 
and agony. Looking long and earnestly 
at the picture, it is said the famous Boer 
General quietly remarked, ' Many a man 
has seen that vision in this war.' 
* * * 

When visiting Bailleul in 1917 the 
following story was told me by a distin- 
guished padre serving with the Y.M.C.A. 
It concerned a casualty clearing station 
on the outskirts of the town. A gentleman 
ranker was brought in terribly wounded. 
His shoulder had been shattered by 
shrapnel and gas gangrene had set in 



f mm . 4 Ajt 




THE RED TRTANGLE IN JERUSALEM 







II 13 

II t 



A 

«M Ml 

ie ii 
ii ii ■ 



THE HEXHAM ABBEY HUT, SCHEVINGEN, HOLLAND 




SALONICA: WINTER OX THE DOIRAN FRONT, SHOWING Y.M.C.A. TENT 




A WELCOME Y.M.C.A. IN THE TRENCHES 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 225 

A constant and welcome visitor was the 
senior chaplain. One day he called, and 
said cheerily, ' Well, old fellow, how goes 
it to-day ? ' ' Thanks, padre/ was the 
reply, ' the pain is not quite so bad to-day, 
but, padre/ he added earnestly, stroking 
his wounded arm, * I wish you would 
persuade them to take this away/ ' Don't 
talk like that/ said the chaplain ; ' you 11 
want to use that old arm for many a year 
to come ! ' ' No, padre/ he replied with 
conviction, ' I shall never use it again ; 
I 'm going west ! ' A moment later he 
was seized with a frightful paroxysm of 
pain, and with a torrent of oaths shrieked 

out, ' Why the b h can't they take 

this arm away ! ' He fell back exhausted, 
but an instant later sat bolt upright and 
with arms held out looked intently towards 
the roof of the hut. His face became 
radiant, and there was no trace of pain. 
In an ecstatic voice he cried out, i Jesus ! 

p 



226 STORIES OF 

Jesus ! Jesus ! ' and fell back dead. 

Thank God that 's possible, and even in 

the hour of death, the blasphemer may 

receive forgiveness and the knowledge of 

salvation, for 

' The ways of men are narrow, 
But the gates of Heaven are wide/ 

* * * 

A lady worker in the Isle of Wight felt 
unaccountably drawn to a young soldier 
who had vowed he would never enter the 
Y.M.C.A. again, because he objected to 
evening prayers. Little by little she won 
his confidence, until the night before he 
left for France with a draft, he came in to 
say good-bye, and told her she was the first 
person to speak to him about sacred things, 
adding — ' I may do some day, but at 
present I cannot see things as you do/ He 
went to France, followed by her prayers, 
and in due course took part in the famous 
attack on Cambrai. Nothing was heard 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 227 

of him for weeks, and his friends were 
forced to the conclusion that he was 
numbered amongst the dead. Time passed 
by, until one morning the lady of the Red 
Triangle received a letter from him, written 
from a German prisoner of war camp. 
It was a commonplace letter and told of 
the great fight, of his capture and intern- 
ment, and so forth, but the concluding 
words were the ones she wanted — ' You 
will be glad to know I can see things as 

you do now/ 

* * * 

We were speaking at the opening of a 
hut near Portsmouth. At the close of the 
ceremony a dear little old widow lady, 
sitting in the front row, told us of her 
own boy. He was a young officer serving 
in France, and was called out late one 
night to help repel a sudden attack by the 
enemy. Shot down by machine-gun fire, 
a brother officer stooped to help him, but 



228 STORIES OF 

he cried, l Lead on, lead forward, I go to 

my God ! ' 

* * * 

A day later another Y.M.C.A. lady in 
one of the hospital huts told us the story 
of her nephew. He, too, was a young 
officer, and was called out to assist in 
repelling a sudden attack by the Huns. 
Our men had scarcely reached No Man's 
Land when the enemy turned on their 
dreadful gas. One of the first to be over- 
come by its fumes was the sergeant of his 
platoon. Regardless of the risk he ran, 
that young officer stuck to his disabled 
sergeant until help arrived. Not realising 
that he had himself become affected by 
the noxious fumes, he tried to stagger to 
his feet, but fell backwards into a shell- 
hole, and in falling broke his neck. The 
sad news was conveyed to his people in the 
North of England, and the night they 
received it his father and mother sat alone 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 229 

in the quiet of their home. Presently the 
mother spoke — ' I feel/ said she, ' that the 
only thing that would console me in my 
loss would be to know that the man for 
whom my boy died was a good man/ 
It was only a week later that the sergeant 
for whom the young officer died, came to 
that home, and when he came he was 
hopelessly intoxicated. The parents quickly 
ascertained that it was not the case of 
a man having been overcome by sudden 
temptation ; they could have forgiven that, 
but he was an utter waster, about as bad 
as a man could be. When he had left the 
house those two sat once again in the 
silence of their home, and it was the 
mother who spoke, slowly and quietly, 
' It almost breaks my heart to know my 
boy gave his precious life for a worthless 
life like that/ And yet, what of the 
young officer himself ? Did he know the 
type of man it was for whom he was about 



230 STORIES OF 

to make the supreme sacrifice ? Of course, 

he knew ; he was in his own platoon, and 

yet, knowing, he willingly gave his life 

in an attempt to save him. One cannot 

recall this story without thinking of those 

wonderful words : ' For scarcely for a 

righteous man will one die : yet per- 

adventure for a good man some would even 

dare to die, but God commendeth His 

Love towards us, in that, while we were 

yet sinners, Christ died for us/ 
* * * 

In a far away corner of the Harfleur 
Valley the Y.M.C.A. has one of its finest 
equipments. The leader was a great man 
in every sense of the word, and every 
night he organised a sing-song for the 
troops, which invariably went with a 
swing. He seemed to know by instinct 
when to strike right in, and what to say. A 
night came, however, when he seemed to 
have struck a bad patch, for no one would 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 231 

play, sing, or recite. The story is told 
here almost word for word, as it was first 
told me by a leading worker home from 
France, who drew a graphic word picture 
of the hut leader pleading from the plat- 
form for help which never came. The huge 
hut was crammed with men, and looking 
at the crowd standing at the back he 
noticed a movement amongst them. A 
trooper detaching himself from the crowd 
slowly elbowed his way to the front. It 
was easy to tell by his unsteady steps that 
he was under the influence of drink. 
Mounting the platform, he turned first 
to the audience and then to the Y.M.C.A. 
leader, and cried in a voice that every one 
could hear : ' What s the matter, Boss ? 
Won't any one oblige you ? Never mind, 
padre, if nobody will help you, I will ! 
What would you like me to do ? I can 
play, or I can sing, or I can recite — or I can 
pray ! ' For a moment the secretary did 



232 STORIES OF 

not know what to reply. He was a man 
of experience, but had never been placed 
in a predicament like that before. To 
his horror he saw the poor drunken trooper 
stumble to the edge of the platform and 
with hands outstretched called for prayer, 
and there followed one of the strangest 
prayers ever heard in public as the drunkard 
cried out, ' Everlasting God ! Everlasting 

God ! Everlasting God ! ' He could 

get no further, but broke down and sobbed 
like a child, and in his agony cried out, 
1 1 had a good mother once ; I Ve been a 
damned fool. May God forgive me ! ' 
Could God possibly hear and answer a 
prayer like that ? Of course He could, 
and He did ! Possibly He would rather 
have even a prayer like that, than the 
meaningless prayers with which we some- 
times mock Him, and if any man ever 
gave evidence of his conversion to God 
it was that trooper. He stayed only four 



p~ 



"T. 




THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 233 

days longer in that reinforcement camp 
in the Harfleur Valley, but if he could help 
it, never for a moment would he let our 
leader out of his sight, and in a hundred 
ways he helped him with his work. He 
would go methodically and frequently 
round the hut, gather up the dirty mugs, 
bring them back to the counter and help 
to wash them. He would go down on his 
hands and knees under the tables, pick 
up scraps of paper and cigarette ends and 
help clean up the floor. Four days later 
he was sent with a detachment up the line ; 
three days later still, with his company, 
he was ordered ' over the top/ and literally 
he went into the ' Valley of the Shadow 
of Death/ but he did not go alone, for 
'there went with him One the form of 
Whom was like unto the form of the Son 
of God ! ' 

The Y.M.C.A. is a Christian Association, 
the Red Triangle a Christian emblem, and 



234 STORIES OF 

for that very reason the freedom of the 
Association is given to every enlisted man. 
Protestant and Catholic, Anglican, Free- 
Churchman, Jew, Hindoo, Mohammedan — 
men of any religion, every religion, and no 
religion at all, are equally welcomed be- 
neath its roof, and no man will ever hear 
unkind or disrespectful things said from 
a Y.M.C.A. platform concerning the faith 
he holds dear. At the same time we can 
never forget that the greatest need of every 
man, amongst the millions we serve in our 
huts, is that he should have a Friend who 
will never fail him nor forsake him, who 
will stand shoulder to shoulder with him 
in his fierce fight with temptation in camp 
or city, will be with him in the trenches, in 
the firing line, as he goes over the parapet, 
or even into the dread l Valley of the 
Shadow/ and there is only One Who can 
thus meet every need of every man, and 
that One is the strong Son of God, the Lord 



THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 235 

Jesus Christ, the best Friend, the truest 
Comrade we can have. 

We often fall far short of our aim, alas ! 
but the primary aim of the Y.M.C. A. always 
has been, and is, to lead men to a saving 
knowledge of that Friend. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE 
RECONSTRUCTION 

The Y.M.C.A. has a very thorough understanding 
of men, and with that sympathy which has char- 
acterised its work throughout has brought to the 
National Employment Exchange system an element 
which has humanised the movement. 

The state of the Labour Market and the condition 
of trade after the lapse of the period of reconstruc- 
tion following the war will be so favourable that the 
physically fit man will experience little difficulty in 
securing employment, but even if that is so we shall, 
for a long time, have with us the disabled man, who, 
without assistance and guidance, cannot be suitably 
placed in industry. We must see an extension of 
the good-will and sympathy evinced by the 
Y.M.C.A. movement amongst every class in the 
community. 

The Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Labour 
are getting up a special department to deal with the 
discharged soldier. What the Y.M.C.A. contri- 
butes to this problem is character. — Mr. G. H. 
Roberts, M.P., Minister of Labour. 

The question is often asked * What is going 

to be done with the Y.M.C.A. huts after 

the war ? ' It is never easy to prophesy 



IN THE RECONSTRUCTION 237 

with any degree of certainty, but there 
can be little doubt that, properly handled, 
these huts will be at least as useful after 
the war as they are now. Their furniture, 
which comprises hundreds of billiard tables, 
thousands of chairs, tables, stoves, ranges, 
and so forth, is well fitted for doing good 
service after the war. One of these huts 
planted down in the centre of some rural 
community and staffed by voluntary 
workers, who have purchased their ex- 
perience by downright hard service during 
the war, should be an inestimable boon. 
It would break the monotony of country 
life ; or, being set down in an industrial 
district of a big town or city, would help 
in congenial ways to relieve the tedium 
of the drab life of the workers. 

The immediate problem is that of the 
discharged man. Incidentally his presence 
in our midst is even now helping us to gain 
that practical acquaintance with his needs 



238 THE RED TRIANGLE 

that will be invaluable in dealing with the 
greater problem of demobilisation. Thou- 
sands of men are discharged from the Navy 
and Army every week. Many of these for 
months, it may be for years to come, will 
not be able to do a good day's work, no 
matter how willing they may be, and it is 
up to us to help them. No one who has 
seen the conditions under which they have 
been living in Picardy or in Flanders can 
wonder at this, and they will need sympathy 
and encouragement on the part of their 
employers. The Y.M.C.A. can supply the 
human touch that may be of the greatest 
possible service to the Ministries of 
Labour, Pensions, and Reconstruction, and 
although the State itself must take re- 
sponsibility for the future of those who 
return broken from the war and for their 
dependents, there will still be ample room 
for voluntary effort without any taint of 
charity. 



IN THE RECONSTRUCTION 239 

A number of experiments are being tried, 
all designed to point the way to future 
efforts if such experiments prove successful. 
The Red Triangle Farm Colony at Kinson 
in Dorset has been fitted up as a sanatorium 
for the benefit of men discharged from the 
Navy and Army who need sanatorium 
treatment because they are suffering from, 
or threatened with, consumption, and 
whilst the men are undergoing treatment 
they are trained in poultry-farming, horti- 
culture, and other outdoor pursuits on 
plans cordially approved by the authorities. 

A Red Triangle Poultry Farm in Surrey 
is also run entirely for the benefit of dis- 
charged men, and a somewhat larger 
venture is under way in Suffolk with a 
two hundred acre farm and extensive fruit 
gardens. At Portsmouth and other centres 
hostel accommodation is provided for men 
who, on leaving the Navy or Army, go 
through a course of training for civil life. 



240 THE RED TRIANGLE 

Experimental workshops in London are 
proving a great success, discharged soldiers 
being trained in carpentry, joinery, picture- 
framing, and the repairing of pianos. 

A series of exhibitions dealing with the 
work of ex-soldiers has been successfully 
inaugurated, and Red Triangle employ- 
ment bureaux have already secured situa- 
tions for more than twenty thousand 
discharged men. 

The biggest opportunity for the Red 
Triangle will come with the declaration of 
peace. ' After the war ' for tens of thou- 
sands of men has commenced already, 
and not only during the war, but in the 
reconstruction we shall need the help of 
every worker who is prepared heart and 
soul to work out the full programme of 
the Red Triangle for Britain's sake and 
for the sake of the Kingdom of God. 



Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
at the Edinburgh University Press 



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